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THE HIGHER LAW, 



RELATIONS TO CIVIL GOVERNMENT: 



WITH PARTICULAR REFERENCE TO 



SLAVERY, 



THE FUGITIVE SLAVE LAW. 



BY WILLIAMTOSMER. 



" TBE LORD IS OCR JTOGE, THE LORD IS OUR LAW-GIVER, THE LORD IS 

odr kikg."— Imiah. 



AUBURN: 

DEEBT & MILLEK, 
1852. 



Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1852, by 

WILLIAM HOSMEK, 
In the Clerk's Office of the Northern District of New-York. 



TO 

WILLIAM H. SEWARD, 

LATE GOVEENOR OF THE 3TATE OF NEW-YORK, AND NOW 
SENATOR OF THE UNITED STATES : 

Sir — The permission which I have, to inscribe 
this volume to you, is gratefully acknowledged. 
The title was suggested by incidents connected with 
yourself, and it was therefore fit that the work 
should go out to the world with the alliance of 
your name. But other reasons were not wanting : 
the eminent ability and patriotism with which, 
on all occasions, whether in the executive chair, or 
in the national legislature, or at the bar, you have 
defended the rights of humanity, entitle you to the 
lasting gratitude of your countrymen, and render it 
proper for them, in every suitable way, to express 
their high regard for your services. 

THE AUTHOR. 



PREFACE- 



It affords me no small pleasure to speak for those 
who cannot speak for themselves. The slave, man- 
acled and dumb, is forbidden to assert, either by 
word or deed, his right to the inalienable and price- 
less inheritance of liberty. In this sad condition, 
who shall more deeply sympathize with the bond- 
man, or more strenuously advocate his claims, than 
the ministers of Him who came "to proclaim liberty 
to the captives, and the opening of the prison doors 
to them that are bound ?" But there is more than 
a work of mercy involved in this issue. The highest 
principles of the Christian faith have been impugned, 
and if ministers were inclined to stand aside, they 
could not, without an utter forfeiture of character. 
It is their business to proclaim the Higher Law, and 
the Higher Law as paramount to all other laws. 
They are heralds of the kingdom of God, and when 
that kingdom is contemned, they must appear in 
its defence, or Christ is betrayed in the house of his 
friends. This task is incidental to the statesman, 



Vlll CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER VIII. 

PAGE. 

SLAVERY, 86 

CHAPTER IX. 

EFFECTS OF SLAVERY, 107 

CHAPTER X. 

SLAVERY A CRIME, 123 

CHAPTER XI. 

APOLOGIES FOR SLAVERY, 129 

CHAPTER XII. 

GOVERNMENT AND RELIGION SUBVERSIVE OF SLA- 
VERY, 110 

CHAPTER XIII. 

CAPACITY OF SLAVES FOR CIVIL GOVERNMENT,. ... 146 

CHAPTER XIV. 

THE FUGITIVE SLAVE LAW, 156 

c 
CHAPTER XV. 

CONSTITUTIONS AND COMPROMISES, 174 

CHAPTER XVI. 

EFFECTS OF SLAVERY ON THE FREE STATES, 180 



I 



CONTENTS. IX 

CHAPTER XVII. 

paob. 
POSSIBLE RESULTS, 1S9 

CHAPTER XVIII. 

THE CONCLUSION 200 



THE HIGHER LAW. 



THE HIGHER LAW. 



CHAPTER I. 

INTRODUCTION. 

If human laws are the highest, they certainly 
ought to be obeyed at any and every hazard. Their 
agreement or disagreement with the law of God is 
a matter of no consequence : they may be right, or 
they may be wrong, but in either case, if we ac- 
knowledge their supremacy, the subject must obey, 
and as much in one case as in the other. This con- 
clusion cannot be resisted, if the premises on which 
it rests are allowed to stand. Our present inquiry, 
therefore, is one fraught with the deepest interest 
to human welfare. It lies at the very foundation of 
duty. The question is alike important to civil and 
to religious obligations. 

It is obvious that no ex cathedra decision on this 
subject can avail any thing ; the question of su- 
premacy — 'if supremacy exists anywhere — must be 
determined by an appeal to facts. Mere hypothe- 
sis will not answer in so serious a matter: neither 
2 



14: THE niGIIER LAW. 

will prescription, nor tradition. "We can rest on 
nothing short of those substantial elements of know- 
ledge of which our own consciousness takes cogni- 
zance. 

Some may consider the question already settled — 
a foregone conclusion — and object to re-opening it. 
"We once considered it so, at least so far as this coun- 
try is concerned ; but recent circumstances have 
materially changed this opinion. The supremacy 
of the Divine law is no longer an unquestioned truth 
among us. Of this we need no other proof than the 
fact, that when a distinguished citizen of this state 
lately declared, in the Senate of the United States, 
that " there is a higher law than the constitution,"* 
the declaration, instead of eliciting an instant and 
cordial approval, drew down upon him a storm of 
invective. For the utterance of a truth which must 
ever be fundamental to Christianity, he was charged 
with seditious and treasonable designs against the 
government of the country. These charges were 
not hastily made, in the excitement of debate, but 
were the cool, deliberate sentiments of men who 



* "It is true, indeed, that the national domain is ours. It is true it was ac- 
quired with the valor and with the wealth of the whole nation. But we hold, nev- 
ertheless, no arbitrary power over it. We hold no arbitrary authority over any 
thing, whether acquired lawfully, or seized by usurpation. The constitution regu- 
lates our stewardship; the constitution devotes the domain to union, to justice, to 
defence, to welfare, and to liberty. Hut there is a higher law than the constitution, 
which regulates our authority over the domain, and devotes it to the same noble 
purposes. The territory is a part, no inconsiderable part, of the common heritage 
of mankind, bestowed upon them by t lie Creator of the universe. We are his stew- 
ards, and must so discharge our trust as to secure in the highest attainable degree 
their happiness." — Speech o/'Gov. SEWARD in the Senate, March 12, IST>0. 



INTRODUCTION. 15 

speak only what they think. They were made again 
and again, in Congress and out of Congress, by 
secular men and ecclesiastics, from the press and the 
pulpit. As a specimen of them we give the follow- 
ing from the Washington Eejmhlic — a leading politi- 
cal paper, published in the District of Columbia : 

" We have endeavored to show into what labyrinths of 
error a statesman runs when he acknowledges a higher law 
than the constitution, and his oath to support it. We need 
not dwell more on that point. We have seen that Mr. 
Seward has culled the field of fanatical declamation of its 
choicest flowers; and in admirable English and neatly elab- 
orated periods, avowed an independence of constitutional 
obligation, which, if followed by others, must end in the an- 
nihilation of all government, all law, all rights. Every other 
man in the United States has just as much right to set up 
a law in his breast, ' higher than the constitution,' as Mr. 
Seward has. And as constitutional law is the highest man 
can make, it follows that every man may break municipal 
and legislative law with yet greater impunity. Anarchy and 
bloodshed ; the law of the strong arm ; the law of the sword ; 
the Lynch law, and kindred enormities, are the sequence of 
a doctrine like this. Anarchy, in its worst form ; and the 
law of force, in its crudest aspect" 

When such language as this is allowed to pass 
unrebuked, it is time for those who believe in a 
Higher Law to state their views without equivoca- 
tion or evasion, and witli whatever of argument they 
can command. Unless we greatly mistake, the first 
principles of both natural and revealed religion are 



16 THE HIGHER LAW. 

openly assailed. It is barely possible, however, that 
those who hold the sentiments contained in the 
above extract, only intend to assert that human 
enactments have a conditional supremacy. They 
mean, perhaps, no more than this — that in the ar- 
rangement of Providence, the laws of man are as- 
signed as an ultimate standard of right, to which it 
is the will of God that all men should bow as to 
himself. But this explanation, though it may re- 
lieve the case of that stark infidelity which must 
otherwise attach to it, is by no means satisfactory. 
It is scarcely less objectionable in any respect, and 
probably more mischievous in practice, than avow- 
ed skepticism. I shall not here enter upon the ar- 
gument by which this phase of the question is so 
easily met and refuted, as it will come up more 
properly in another place ; but it may be well to 
state, in the outset, that all conclusions based upon 
such an explanation are utterly sophistical. ~No 
higher law, existing under such modifications, can 
have any effect upon the conduct of men. "We 
may as well — -and better — have infidelity without 
this poor disguise. The thin drapery of religion 
thrown over the disgusting form of atheism, may 
deceive the unsuspecting, but cannot change the 
nature of things, nor lessen the disastrous conse- 
quences of error. 

These statements sufficiently disclose the motives 
which have led to this work. The writer has no 
wish to engage in a semi-political controversy; he 



INTRODUCTION. 17 

is quite willing to leave politics to those to whom 
such things more immediately belong. But a full 
conviction that a blow is aimed' — -whether mali- 
ciously or ignorantly, he does not say — at the very 
existence of religion and the best interests of the 
state, leaves him not at liberty to decline the inves- 
tigation. ]STor is it probable that the discussion will 
soon end. The burden of determining anew, or at 
least of re-asserting what are the rights respective- 
ly of civil government and of Christianity, seems to 
be thrown upon this age. The lessons of history 
appear to exert little influence, and the great prob- 
lem of human rights must be solved once more. 
May it be, not as heretofore, on fields of blood and 
carnage ; but with the more powerful, yet bloodless, 
weapons of truth and righteousness. 

In conducting this discussion we shall not be con- 
fined to any single aspect of the subject ; much less 
to a survey of the Higher Law in the abstract. The 
existence and claims of such a lav* constitute an 
all-pervading truth. "We shall find traces of them 
in every thing around us — in man, in civil govern- 
ment, in the external world, and in whatever pre- 
sents itself to our observation. This is not simply 
a question of jurisprudence, or of ethics, or of the- 
ology; but rather of all combined — of truth in 
general. 



18 THE IIIGIIER LAW. 



CHAPTER II. 
THE HIGHEE LAW. 



SECTION I. 

MANIFESTATION OF THE HIGHEE LAW. 

The law of God is indicated in the following 
ways : 

1. By the natural constitution of things. 

2. By the course of Providence. 

3. By direct revelation. 

N a t u e e . 

That man is not left wholly to self-regulation, is 
a truth so obvious as to require no proof. That he 
is a "being affected by influences beyond his control, 
has never been denied, and never can be by any 
sane mind. It may be difficult to determine what 
these influences are, or to what extent they are to 
be regarded in the practice of life ; but the fact of 
their existence admits of no dispute. One or two 
facts in relation to physical existence will illustrate 
this remark. Death, though it may be accidental, 
cannot by any possibility be prevented. As an ul- 



MANIFESTATION OF THE HIGHER LAW. 19 

timate event, it is absolutely certain. The mode of 
subsistence, however it may be varied, is, after all, 
essentially the same in all human beings, and wholly 
unalterable. Man can subsist only by nourish- 
ment, received into the system through the appro- 
priate organs of nutrition. Again, he must have air 
to breathe, or death immediately ensues. The cir- 
culation of the blood is another condition of life, 
equally incontestible. 

That the constitution of things clearly unfolds a 
higher law than man can ordain, has been partly 
shown in the preceding observations. But the ar- 
gument may be extended much farther. !N~o one 
will pretend that the several endowments and con- 
ditions of human nature do not point to certain cor- 
respondencies in practical life. For instance, the 
demand for food evidently points to some exertion 
to procure food, or, in other words, to the great law 
of industry so clearly revealed in the Scriptures — 
" In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till 
thou return unto the ground." The social feelings 
as evidently indicate that man was made for society, 
and point to the marriage relation, no less distinct- 
ly than the written word, which says, " It is not 
good that the man should be alone." " Let every 
man have his own wife." Again, the desire of hap- 
piness prevalent in every human breast, connected 
as this desire is with a consciousness of dependence 
upon others, intimates the duty of reciprocal kind- 
ness, as plainly as the law, which says, " Thou shalt 



20 THE HIGHER LAW. 

love thy neighbor as thyself." These are only a 
few of the numberless instances in which the will 
of the Creator is made unmistakably plain, by the 
constitution that he has given us, or the circumstan- 
ces in which he has placed us. It would not be 
possible to misapprehend the design in either of the 
instances referred to : at all events, it would be quite 
as impossible to do so as it would to mistake the 
use of our natural faculties, and attempt to walk on 
the hands instead of the feet, or to hear with the 
eyes instead of the ears. 

Now, the use of these simple truths is this : 
they show, beyond all controversy, that at least in 
some things we are bound by conditions — that is, 
laws — which we must abide, because it is not in 
our power to set them aside. That is to say, physi- 
cal existence acknowledges a higher law, whether 
Ave intellectually and morally acknowledge it or not. 

The question then, so far as relates to some kind 
of a law, is settled. 

But we are in search of a moral law, and until 
this is found, it does not become positively certain 
that man may not do as he pleases in tilings of a 
moral character. If we admit the claims of Chris- 
tianity, the argument is at an end. I'"i' that is pro- 
fessedly a revelation of the law of God. Or if we 
even admit the existence of God, the result is the 
same. The nature of God makes him the Supreme 
haw giver. He could not be God if he were not the 
highest; and if the highest in any thing, then is he 



MANIFESTATION OF THE HIGHER LAW. 21 

the highest in every thing — in morals as well as in 
physics. But if even his existence is denied, the 
conclusion yet remains good, that there must be a 
higher law. We have seen that physical life, or 
nature,. is "held fast in fate," and this, irrespective 
of all questions touching the existence or non-exist- 
ence of a Supreme Being. Our moral nature, what- 
ever it may be, is circumscribed by limits and 
conditions strictly analogous. As we cannot resist 
death, nor live without nourishment, so neither can 
we carry virtue, or any crime, beyond a given extent. 
Man's will is not supreme in the department of mor- 
als. He cannot love and hate the same being at 
the same time ; nor can he be good and bad at the 
same time. He cannot blend vice and virtue, nor 
change the nature of the one or the other. What 
is right, is right in spite of him ; and what is wrong, 
is Avrong in spite of him. Hence it is clear that in 
these particulars he is controlled by a law above 
himself, the conditions of which he is unable to 
change, and the authority of which he is equally 
unable to throw off. He is, moreover, unable to 
separate himself from moral character ; his nature 
has in it the elements of morality, and he may be 
either good or bad, but he cannot avoid both of 
these conditions, and remain exempt from either 
virtue or vice. Kor can the influence of numbers 
make any difference in his moral relations. The 
united voice of the race might decree that vice should 
be virtue, and virtue vice ; or, that neither vice nor 
2* 



22 THE HIGHER LAW. 

virtue should have any existence, and the decree 
would be just as powerless as if it had affirmed that 
man should not die. 

PROVIDENCE. 

Providence is the term which we employ to des- 
ignate the course of nature. The constitution of 
things proclaims for what they are fitted, but it does 
not necessarily determine what their practical ope- 
ration shall be. Not that the things themselves 
have power to change their destiny, but that the 
Author of nature may not be governed by what 
seems to us the natural use of the things he has 
made. Is the Divine providence, then, in accord- 
ance with the natural constitution of things, or not ? 
The affirmative of this question is certain, beyond 
all contingency. We have already seen that the 
great laws of man's physical and moral being are 
sovereign — that they are not subject to his will, and 
cannot be set aside by him — that they are woven 
into his nature, and must have their course. The 
question now arises — Have these laws, thus wrought 
into the constitution of man, declined ? Are there 
any exceptions? — and if so, do they indicate that 
the universal law is not steadily maintained in the 
government of the world ? The course of Provide] ice 
seems to be eminently in harmony with the creative 
law. Death is no more incidental than it was at first ; 
mortality prevails over all men with the same un- 
dgviating certainty that it did over the first genera- 



MANIFESTATION OF THE HIGHER LAW. 23 

tion. The mode of subsistence is likewise unvaried. 
Food and air, and the operation of the vital func- 
tions, are just as indispensable now as they ever 
were. Remoter laws also are equally unimpaired. 
The earth still yields its harvest only to the hand of 
industry ; the social relations still have their fidl 
attractive force, and confer the same benefits as of 
old. Nor is charity less indispensable than it used 
to be. In these respects all things remain as they 
were from the beginning ; the creation and perpetu- 
ation of the race involve precisely the same prin- 
ciples. 

The moral administration of Providence is mark- 
ed by the same exact regard to constitutional prin- 
ciples. Man has not been able to surpass himself; 
his crimes and his virtues are still those of man. 
He has not done either good or bad as he might 
have done, had it been possible for him, at will, to 
rise above or sink below the powers which God has 
given him. Good is good, and bad is bad — now as 
heretofore. Virtue finds its reward, and vice its 
punishment, with as much certainty as at any former 
period — that is, invariably. We say, invariably, 
because there are only slight exceptions in the ac- 
tual result, and none at all in the administrative 
law. Any apparent irregularity which we may de- 
tect, grows out of the almost incomprehensible sweep 
of retributive Providence. This is only a prelimi- 
nary state, and the conduct of its affairs must, in 
some degree, be modified by considerations connect- 



24 THE HIGHEK LAW. 

cd with a future world. But this is no abatement 
of order — no variation of principle — no change of 
law. The effect may be delayed, but the cause does 
not cease to operate. The culprit may be shielded 
for a time, yet vengeance is sure to overtake him, 
unless he repents. God does not relinquish his pur- 
pose. We conclude, then, that the course of Provi- 
dence is affirmative of all natural indications. The 
Governor of the universe is carrying out the designs 
of the Creator. 

REVELATION. 

Of the will of God, as manifested in revelation, 
but little need be said. It is too plain and too de- 
cisive to require comment in a preliminary inquiry 
like this. If we admit revelation at all, we admit 
it in its character of law. That the revealed word 
of God sanctions and upholds all the groat princi- 
ples embodied in the constitution of the world, is a 
self-evident truth. The Bible is the Higher Law, in 
fact and in form. It is a formal announcement of 
the Divine will as the Divine will. In it God, in his 
character of Creator, and Upholder, and Governor of 
all things, prescribes to man the rules of duty, ac- 
companied by all necessary prohibitions and penal- 
ties. What is silently expressed by creation and 
providence, in the Scriptures is made to assume the 
shape of speech. That more is comprehended in 
the written word than in the teachings of nature, 
was to be expected, and does not vary the case, 



MANIFESTATION OF THE HIGHER J.A.W. 2 J 

since the difference is only in degree and not in kind. 
As in nature the law is expressed in the work, so in 
revelation the law is contained in the word. Hence 
the terms word and law are often used interchang- 
ably in the sacred writings. The creature could not 
exist without its inherent constitutional or organic 
law ; neither can the word of God exist without its 
essential qualities — supremacy, holiness, wisdom. 
benevolence. This word is undoubtedly the bright- 
est, latest, fullest manifestation of law that can be 
conceived. It is God breaking the silence of eter- 
nity with an audible utterance of his own character 
and purposes. Where nature but hinted, this gives 
a full exposition ; and so copious is the information, 
that nothing but irreverent curiosity or selfish pride 
can ask for more. It is true that Divinity assumed 
the office of Lawgiver, when the unalterable rela- 
tions of things were fixed ; that, however, was not 
all the law man required — nature's code was not 
enough to meet all his wants — he had hopes and 
fears that could not be satisfied till life and immor- 
tality, with all their conditions, were brought to 
light through the gospel. He needed not a higher 
law than had been stamped upon nature, but a re- 
affirmation of the original decree, with the addition 
of such provisions and illustrations as are rendered 
necessary by the present lapsed condition of human- 
ity. Having this, he needs no more. 



26 THE HIGHER LAW. 



SECTION II. 

CHARACTER OF THE HIGHER LAW. 

Lsr characterizing the Divine law, we shall of course 
have reference to its most perfect form — to the writ- 
ten word — and especially to that written upon ta- 
bles of stone. But where shall we begin ! The law 
itself is a wonder — an aggregate of wonders. All 
Scripture was given by inspiration, but the law was 
written with the finger of God. From this assem- 
blage of magnificent requirements it is not easy to 
select, even for the purpose of admiration — so fully 
has Godhead left its stamp on every part. All is 
equally excellent, and equally authoritative — not 
one jot or tittle shall fail. Resistance in the least, 
is resistance in the greatest ; " for whosoever shall 
keep the whole law, and yet offend in one point, he 
is guilty of all." It is here as in the chain of na- 
ture — ■ 

" whatever link you strike, 



Tenth or ten-thousandth, hrcaks the chain alike." 

Each precept is clothed with all the authority of the 
Eternal, and disobedience, however slight, sets that 
authority at defiance. 

It will readily be admitted that this law is an 
adumbration of its author. God himself shines forth 
in rvery word. The law of God — whether we un- 
derstand thereby the several precepts he has given, 
or the Scriptures generally — is a revelation of his 



CHARACTER OF THE HIGHER LAW. 27 

mind, and will, and nature, incomparably more per- 
fect than could be obtained by any other means in 
this life. We must not, however, forget that this 
law is not himself. It may be like him — a trans- 
cript of his mind' — but it is no more than a trans- 
cript. So man bears the image of God, but man is 
not God. 

Tims, while we do not deify the law, we never- 
theless make it the perfect work of a perfect God. 
We do not worship the law, but accept it as a bright 
and beneficent expression of the Divine character, 
and as the only sufficient rule for the government 
of conduct. The points to which we wish more 
particularly to direct attention are the following : 

SUPREMACY. 

Man's nature being subordinate, can never rise 
above the Divine law. A law of God once given, 
remains in force till repealed by Him who gave it. 
We cannot exempt ourselves, because the relation 
between Him and us cannot be changed. Between 
the creature and the Creator — the finite and the 
Infinite — there must ever be the same undiminish- 
ed difference. In Him centres the right to rule, and 
in us the necessity to obey. He is ever God, and 
we are ever his creatures. There can be no change 
of natures. He cannot cease to be God, nor we to 
be men. This, duly considered, must forever estab- 
lish his claims, not barely in the things where we 
have his special direction, but as our Supreme Gov- 



28 THE HIGHER LAW. 

ernor, whose authority is always to be acknowledg- 
ed, even though we may not he able to ascertain 
his will. 

Men have ingeniously sought to evade the force 
of this law by alleging that its supremacy is con- 
lined to particular departments of duty. It has been 
affirmed, for instance, that in matters of faith or re- 
ligion, the Bible is the highest authority, but not in 
matters of state. This is a miserable evasion. The 
Divine supremacy extends to every thing, and to 
one thing as fully as to another. Matters of relig- 
ion are no more under God's direction or authority 
than matters of state. His supremacy is universal 
and unlimited, throughout all time and all space. 
But it is claimed that institutions existing by Divine 
authority are exponents of the Divine will, and that 
we are to receive their decrees as the decree of God. 
This, also, is a fallacy. Before God there are no 
institutions of the kind now alluded to ; he has 
erected no infallibilities of a corporate or social 
character. He has not delegated his authority so as 
to sanction an infringement of his own immaculate 
government. All institutions, and all men, in their 
public as well as their private nets, arc subject to 
the law of God. If institutions had discretionary 
authority — if they might do as they pleased, with- 
out reference to the Bible — then their enactments, 
though wrong, might be obligatory. But institu- 
tions of all kinds areas strictly bound as individuals, 
and they have not the slightest authority to do wrong 



C1IAKACTEK OF THE HIG1IEK LAW. 29 

themselves ; mucli less have they authority to com- 
pel others to do wrong. The law of God in refer- 
ence to all things human, is semper ct iibiquc eadem — 
always and everywhere the same. How prepos- 
terous, then, to allege Divine authority for a wanton 
exercise of power ! There is no power but of God. 
Men have his authority to do right, but they never 
can have his authority to do wrong, or to force oth- 
ers to do wrong. This wonderful law is over all 
equally. The king and the subject, the prince and 
the peasant, are alike amenable for their conduct to 
the one Lawgiver, who is able to save or to destroy. 
Most healthful would the entertainment of this es- 
sential truth be to the heaven-defying multitudes 
who arrogate to themselves entire self-control, be- 
cause God has laid upon them certain duties involv- 
ing the exercise of common-sense. 

HOLINESS. 

The purity of the law is another of its peculiari- 
ties. "The law is holy, and the commandment ho- 
ly, and just, and good." It must be so, for a holy 
God could not be the author of an unholy law. i I is 
law must be, like himself, infinitely pure. Nor does 
this wonderful purity flow from any contingency ; 
it is not an incident attaching to the Divine law. 
God made the law in accordance' with the eternal 
and immutable integrity of his own nature, lie 
could not make an unholy law. It is \\\\> essential 
attribute of his law which makes it so unwelcome 



30 THE I1IGIIEK LAW. 

to wicked men. To all such, the law is a voice of 
condemnation, because their deeds are evil. The 
pure requirements of the Most High impose a sove- 
reign restraint upon corrupt nature. Hence, the 
rebellion among the wicked — they cannot endure 
commands that check so effectually the cherished 
propensities of their depraved hearts. " The carnal 
mind is enmity against God — it is not subject to 
the law of God, neither indeed can be." It is this 
amazing truth that gives such especial importance 
to the doctrine of regeneration. " Without holiness 
no man shall see the Lord," because no man, with- 
out this qualification, can be at peace with him. 
God and the wicked are necessarily and eternally 
enemies— except as the latter may be saved from 
their sins. The conditions of the Divine adminis- 
tration are reformation or destruction. The sinner 
must repent or perish. 

WISDOM. 

Here only has law an indisputably perfect adap* 
tation. Its application to man is especially remark- 
able. Human laws bear heavily upon us at many 
points. Ignorance, and selfishness, and depravity, 
have corrupted legislation, till earth groans under 
legalized wickedness. Kot so with the code of 
heaven. Its strictest prohibitions, its severest pen- 
alties, and its highest injunctions, are alike admi- 
rably adapted to the wants of humanity. Man 
needs just such restraints, just such penalties, and 



CHARACTER OF THE HIGHER LAW. 31 

just such commands. Not one enactment too few, 
not one too many ; not one too lax, not one too strin- 
gent. What a harmonious blending of authority 
with constitutional wants! Verily, none but the 
Creator could have instituted such control. The 
governing power is applied to man as gently as the 
seasons are to nature, or as the elements are to his 
body. The air we breathe, the light which we see, 
the water which laves us, the fire that warms us, 
and the food which nourishes us, are not more care- 
fully and wisely adjusted to our physical powers, 
than are these written laws to the government of 
our moral nature. Let the skeptic reflect on this 
mysterious gentleness of Omnipotence, and learn to 
adore a power which never exerts itself amiss. 

BENEVOLENCE. 

The law is essentially good, and therefore benev- 
olent. It is not impracticable, nor unreasonable. It 
is an infallible ride for the conduct of life. It is the 
exact truth in reference to duty — the true secret of 
success — the only key to happiness and heaven. 
Those who would enter into life must keep the com- 
mandments. These commandments are not arbitra- 
ry tests of authority, imposed by unlimited power ; 
but the true theory of life, comprising directions for 
the certain attainment of the highest felicity. Such 
a rule is priceless, because it sets aside all error, and 
prevents the waste and misdirection of human en- 
ergies. 



32 THE HIGHER LAW. 

SECTION III. 
OBJECTS OF THE HIGHER LAW. 

The general design of the law will readily be in- 
ferred from its character. A law so high and holy, 
so truthful and wise, could not have a low purpose, 
nor any purpose less exalted than the conservation 
of those to whom it was given. The law accom- 
plishes this object by affording to all, protection, in- 
struction and ennoblement. 

1. Human laws may work oppression instead of 
protection ; but the law of God neither oppresses 
any, nor allows any to be oppressed. It protects 
the rights of all, and this too in all respects. By 
banishing every sin, and demanding universal ho- 
liness, it ensures to each and all equal and exact 
justice. This law leaves nothing to human caprice — 
it kn<»\vs neither high nor low, but places all on a 
level, and requires every one to do according to his 
ability. The strong cannot trample upon the weak, 
for all rights are equally sacred before God, "who, 
without respect of persons, judgeth according to 
every man's work." No institution, whether Di- 
vine or human, can depart from this protective and 
immaculate character, without corruption. What- 
ever oppresses or injures, is at war with God and his 
creatures. Even the Beveresl punishments under 
the Divine administration are not oppressive, be- 



OBJECTS OF THE HIGHER LAW. 33 

cause they are not unjust — not inconsistent with 
infinite holiness, wisdom, and goodness. That an 
institution is Divine, cannot therefore be made an 
apology for infringing on the rights of man, or of 
any other class of beings. 

2. The instruction atforded by this law relates to 
all practical goodness. It supplies the rule for do- 
ing whatever man is called to do. It is not an ap- 
proximation of the right — not a problematical and 
doubtful rule, which may or may not eventuate in 
success ; but an authoritative and infallible guide 
to righteousness. The instructive tendency of this 
law is finely characterized in the following passage : 
" The law of the Lord is perfect, converting the soul : 
the testimony of the Lord is sure, making wise the 
simple. The statutes of the Lord are right, rejoic- 
ing the heart : the commandment of the Lord is 
pure, enlightening the eyes. The fear of the Lord 
is clean, enduring forever : the judgments of the 
Lord are true and righteous altogether. More to be 
desired are they than gold, yea than much fine gold : 
sweeter also than honey and the honey-comb. More- 
over by them is thy servant warned ; and in keeping 
of them is great reward." But the special advantage 
which this law confers is a knowledge of the invisi- 
ble state, and of man's duty relating thereto. It3 
requirements appertain not wholly to this life, but 
also to that which is to come. Future rewards and 
punishments, with all their interminable duration 
and unfathomable mystery, are brought to bear up- 



34 TIIE HIGHER LAW. 

on human conduct. Man is taught not only how 
to live, but how to live forever. 

3. Not less wonderful is this law for the dignity 
which it confers on humanity. Aside from the Bible, 
how perfectly brutish is man ! He belongs to the 
soil as much as the trees of the field, and his whole 
life is spent in catering to the flesh. He has no 
hope, and is without God in the world. A low 
round of pleasures and pursuits, purely animal, and 
often vicious, occupy him till the grave opens to 
hide his insignificance. How is the scene changed 
when the law of God is given to such a being ! The 
clod rises to a man — the brute puts on the linea- 
ments of a God. Before, all was bounded by earth - 
and time : now, heaven and eternity are necessary 
ideas — considerations taken into the account when- 
ever any tiling is to be done, or to be left undone. 
The law of God is, in short, a pledge of extended 
duration, and of interests in other worlds. All 
the distressing darkness, and brevity, and poverty, 
which hang over life, disappear at this authoritative 
call to obey the mandate of the King Immortal. 
The present lit!' no longer seems abortive ; it is seen 
as the grand initiative to a still grander life. Death, 
so fearful and hopeless to those who know not God, 
under this law becomes a simple and unspeakably 
gainful transition. It does but bring the christian 
into the more immediate presence of his great em- 
plover, and into that land where the recompense of 
obedience is fully meted out. 



OBJECTS OF THE IIIGHER LAW. 35 

" 'tis a glorious boon to die ! 
This favor can't be prized too high." 

Much of this firm confidence we owe to the fact, 
that we are bound by the law of God to an account- 
ability in another world. Obligations are not dis- 
charged by death ; the grave, all-destroying as it is, 
cannot destroy the claims of heaven. 

Such are the objects of that law by which men 
ought to be governed, and by which they must be 
judged. The law, like its author, is open to con- 
tempt; it can be vilified, if any choose, but not 
with impunity ; it can be violated, if any dare, 
but not without death. " The soul that Burnetii, it 
shall die." There is no parade of authority, no dis- 
play of power, no bugbear terrors to frighten ; and 
yet the doom of the transgressor is as fixed as fate. 
God is not trifling with men : they must be good — • 
good as his law requires — or perish. Nor is this 
goodness to be expected somewhere else, or this law 
more fitting another place. We are to do his will 
here on earth as it is done in heaven. The law of 
God is the very best law for this world, and the 
only law which ensures justice and happiness to 
mankind. 

We are now to turn our attention to Civil Law, 
as a subordinate agency in carrying out the designs 
of the Great Lawgiver. 



36 THE HIGHER LAW. 



CHAPTER III. 
CIVIL GOVERNMENT. 



ITS ORIGIN AND DESIGN. 

Civil Government was not instituted by Christi- 
anity : it is an institution of nature, confirmed and 
sanctioned by Christianity. Man, in the present 
condition of his nature, cannot exist in society, with- 
out feeling the need of government. He wants se- 
curity, which he cannot have in the absence of civil 
law. As this want is common to all men, we find 
all men inclined to establish and support some kind 
of governmental regulation, which shall meet the 
exigencies of their condition. In this view of the 
subject, government has very much the nature of a 
voluntary compact. But the actual origin of gov- 
ernment is modified by two facts. First: The con- 
dition of man at the commencement of society, was 
not such as to admit of a compact. The original 
pair were the only adults, till their own children 
had grown ii[>, and all the government possible, un- 
der the circumstances, was self-government. On 
the parents, of course, devolved the duty of govern- 



CIVIL GOVERNMENT. 37 

ing their offspring, but not by contract — it was a 
duty growing out of the relation of the parties. Pa- 
rental government was just as necessary as parental 
support and care. Secondly : All men are at first 
infants, and enter into society in a state of infancy ; 
it follows, therefore, that they become members of 
civil society before they have attained to the age in 
which a choice could be made. Men are born into 
government — they come under its protection at the 
moment of their birth ; and this has been the case 
of all who have ever lived, since governments were 
established. At first, government was only paren- 
tal, but this, as men increased, gradually gave place 
to what is called, civil government. Monarchies, 
however, even at this day, are often not essentially 
different from the first type of government. The 
king is a chief father, or great parent — a pope — ■ 
whose will is acknowledged to be supreme, so far 
as the will of one man may be supreme over that of 
another. 

The further modification of government, by the 
introduction of written laws, and. by a division of 
governmental powers among many, instead of con- 
solidating them in one individual, is the result of 
that maturity to which man attains, by education 
or experience. These modifications are not essen- 
tial to the existence of government ; they are only 
a means of giving to it greater perfection. 

The origin of civil government shows conclusively 
what must have been its design. Both revelation 



38 THE HIGHER LAW. 

and nature also concur in asserting that the institu- 
tion is of a conservative and beneficent character. 
" Rulers are not a terror to good works, but to the 
evil. Wilt thou then not be afraid of the power? 
Do that which is good, and thou shalt have praise 
of the same. For he is the minister of God to thee 
for good. But if thou do that which is evil, be 
afraid; for he beareth not the sword in vain: for 
he is the minister of God, a revenger to execute 
wrath upon him that doeth evil." This needs no 
comment ; and were there any necessity, we might 
support the doctrines of the passage 1 >y a great va- 
riety of scriptures, all precisely of the same import. 

So far as human authority is concerned, the best 
exposition of the purposes of government is that con- 
tained in our own Declaration of Independence, and 
in the Constitution of these United States : 

"We hold these truths to be self-evident: That all men 
are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator 
"with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, 
liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these 
rights, governments arc instituted among men, deriving their 
just powers from the consent of the governed; that when- 
ever any form of government becomes destructive of these 
ends, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it, and 
to institute a new government, laying its foundation on 
such principles, and organizing its powers in such form, as 
to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and hap- 
piness." — Declaration of Independence. 

" We, the people of the United States, in order to form a 
more perfect union, establish justice, ensure tranquillity, pro- 



CIVIL GOVERNMENT. 39 

vide for the common defence, promote the general welfare, 
and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our pos- 
terity, do ordain and establish this constitution for the United 
States of America." — Preamble to the Constitution. 

These authorities are amply sufficient to show the 
benevolent design of human laws, but I shall add a 
few others. 

"All government has the same general end, which is that of 
preservation." — Montesquieu, Spirit of Laws : b. 11, ch. 5. 

" The Christian religion is a stranger to mere despotic 
power." — Ibid.: book 24, ch. 3. 

" Considering the Creator only as a being of infinite pow- 
er, he was able unquestionably to have prescribed whatever 
laws he pleased to his creature, man, however unjust or se- 
vere. But as he is a being of infinite wisdom, he has laid 
down only such laws as were founded in those relations of 
justice, that existed in the nature of things antecedent to any 
positive precept. These are the eternal, immutable laws of 
good and evil, to which the Creator himself, in all his dis- 
pensations, conforms; and which he has enabled human 
reason to discover, so far as they are necessary for the con- 
duct of human actions. Such, among others, are these 
principles: that we should live honestly, should hurt nobody, 
and should render to every one his due; to which three 
general precepts Justinian has reduced the whole doctrine 
of the law." — Blackstone, Com., Intro.: sec. 2. 

" We ought not, therefore, to separate the science of pub- 
lic law from that of ethics, nor encourage the dangerous 
suggestion, that governments are not as strictly bound by 
the obligations of truth, justice, and humanity, in relation to 
other powers, as they are in the management of their own 
local concerns." — Kent, Com.: sec. 1. 



40 the incnER law. 

" The divine right of kings is, like the divine right of other 
magistrates — the law of the land, or even actual and quiet 
possession of their office — a right ratified, we humbly pre- 
sume, by the Divine approbation, so long as obedience to 
their authority appears to be necessary or conducive to the 
common welfare. Princes are ordained of God, by virtue 
only of that general decree by which he assents, and adds 
the sanction of his will, to every law of society which pro- 
motes his own purpose, the communication of human happi- 
ness." — Dr. Paley, Mor. and Pol. Phil: book 6, ch. 4. 

"The fundamental principles which are deducible from 
the law of nature and from Christianity, respecting political 
affairs, appear to be these: 1. Political power is rightly 
2)ossessed only when it is possessed by the consent of the 
community. 2. It is rightly exercised only when it subserves 
the welfare of the community. 3. And only when it sub- 
serves this purpose by means which the moral law permits." 
— Dymond, Priac'qyles of Morality : essay 3, ch. 1. 

It will not be necessary, I trust, to make further 
citations, or to adduce other arguments, in support 
of this general proposition- — That civil government 
is designed for the good of mankind. But if this 
be the case, it follows, inevitably, that such govern- 
ment is perverted, whenever it becomes oppressive. 
Taking our stand upon this fundamental truth — the 
essentia] and immutable benevolence of the govern- 
mental institution — we shall proceed to examine 
the limitations to which it must necessarily be sub- 
jected, and the POWERS with which it is legitimately 
invested. 



LIMITATIONS OF CIVIL GOVERNMENT. 41 



CHAPTER IV. 
LIMITATIONS OF CIVIL GOVERNMENT. 



These limitations may be stated as follows : 

1. Civil government cannot bind the conscience. 

2. It cannot impair any other natural rights or 
powers of mankind. 

3. It cannot release man from his responsibility 
to God. 

4. It cannot change the nature of vice and virtue. 



SECTION I. 

CIVIL GOVERNMENT CANNOT BIND THE CONSCIENCE. 

It has always been the aim of tyrants to invade 
the conscience. They know if human nature is 
allowed to possess any rule of duty, superior to that 
which they prescribe, that obedience will depend 
very much upon the character of what is required. 
A good man will not keep a bad law, if he is left 
to believe that his own conscience should govern 
his conduct. Hence i1 becomes accessary to sub- 
vert the very framework of the human constitution. 



42 THE HIGHER LAW. 

to make it subserve the purpose of oppression. 
Government cannot be made an engine of despot- 
ism till it lias done violence to the moral system of 
man. Conscience is that faculty by which we dis- 
tinguish between right and wrong ; it is the moral 
sense, and essential to the constitution of moral 
agency. If this natural faculty, which the Creator 
has fixed in the human soul, is under the control of 
government, then obedience is due to law, whatever 
may be its character. Human law becomes the 
highest law known to man, and all deviations from 
it are justly punishable. Against this enormous 
outrage on the rights of man — this utter prostitu- 
tion of civil authority — it behooves all who value 
the peace and welfare of society, to enter their sol- 
emn protest. The following considerations "will 
place the subject in its true light : 

1. It subverts the design of government. "We 
have seen that the institution of law was intended 
for the benefit, and not for the injury of man ; it 
follows, therefore, that any violence done to the 
human faculties, is an abuse of governmental pow- 
ers. The Creator established law to operate in 
conjunction with conscience, and not irrespective 
of it ; much less did he intend that law should mar 
his work, by usurping control over the moral faculty. 

2. But the thing is physically impossible. Con- 
science may be destroyed, but it cannot be bound. 
We may extinguish the light which God has placed 
in the soul, but we cannot change its nature. All 



LIMITATIONS OF CIVIL GOVERNMENT. 43 

attempts to bind conscience are, in reality, attempts 
to annihilate it. The vise of the moral faculty is to 
judge of right and wrong, and it has no other use ; 
hence those who interfere with its decisions, virtually 
say there shall he no conscience. 

3. God himself does not, by any of his laws, in- 
vade this faculty. His laws are as precisely adapted 
to our moral constitution, as the physical world is 
to our material organism. Light is not more con- 
genial to the eye, nor air to the lungs, than is the 
moral law of Jehovah to the moral faculty in man. 

4. Conscience is an element of our nature, and 
cannot be subjected to any human authority. Man's 
conscience is as his eyes, or his hands, or his feet — 
that is, a rmrt of himself — made such by the Crea- 
tor, and to disturb its action is to say that man shall 
not be man. The eyes are left to see, and the ears 
to hear, because common sense has hitherto kept us 
from the gross absurdity and injustice of restraining 
their use. "We may legislate against the abuse, but 
not against the use of these faculties. Law may co- 
operate with nature in promoting the good of man, 
and this is all it may do : it can have no power to 
arrest the design, or to change the plan of nature. 

5. As conscience is the faculty which constitutes 
us moral agents, it follows that laAV cannot interfere 
without, at the same time, transferring this moral 
agency. When the law determines for us, it must 
release us from all obligation to determine for our- 
selves. This would be to lodge responsibility in 



44: THE HIGHER LAW. 

government, where God has never placed it, and 
to withhold it from man, who is alone competent to 
the trust. 

6. If the law may control conscience in one thing, 
it may in another, and so on, till man becomes the 
merest tool of government, and that, too, without 
the slightest regard to the moral character of gov- 
ernment. A bad action, if commanded, is, upon 
this hypothesis, just as obligatory as a good one. 
~No right to discriminate can be allowed, except by 
giving to conscience its legitimate supremacy. Ei- 
ther conscience must be supreme, or man must cease 
from all distinctions between right and wrong. 

These reasons, we think, establish beyond success- 
ful contradiction, both the immutability and invio- 
lableness of conscience. Able jurists have, however, 
conceded that conscience may be bound in two 
respects. First, in things morally indifferent ; and 
secondly, in things which are morally right, as in 
this case the civil law has the sanction of the law 
of God. As to the first of these distinctions, it 
does not belong to this inquiry, because things mor- 
ally indifferent — if there be any such things — can 
have no reference to conscience. The second par- 
ticular is more important, but obviously fallacious. 
Human laws, when just, have the same force as Di- 
vine, we grant ; yet this does not help the matter, 
for the reason that the Divine law no more binds 
the conscience, than the air we breathe binds the 



LIMITATION OF CIVIL GOVERNMENT. 4:5 

lungs, or than light binds the eye. Conscience is in 
harmony with this laAv, but the law no more binds 
conscience, than conscience binds the law. The 
law of God is that standard of perfect rectitude with 
which man's conscience was made to agree, and the 
agreement between them is only a natural coinci- 
dence : it is not a mastery, not a binding, in the 
ordinary sense of these terms. 

This view of the subject places before us the true 
relation of man to God's moral government. He 
is not bound as a slave ; his obedience is not servile — 
exacted with despotic authority. It is the hearty 
acquiescence of the good in goodness. It is doing 
as man was made to do, that is, right and only right, 
forever. Not to do good is the soul's death, because 
it was created and fitted for this very work, and for 
none other. Obedience to God is the natural ele- 
ment of man, and harmonizes with all his powers. 
A pure law is just as essential to the moral consti- 
tution as pure air is to the physical constitution. 
The higher law, then, is conservative, and binds man 
— if it can be said to bind him at all — only as food 
binds the stomach, or as the vital air binds the or- 
gans of respiration. Conscience responds to this 
law with infinite pleasure, and from its nature must 
inevitably repel everything foreign to it. This 
moral faculty is always in accordance with the Di- 
vine law, because that law is always right, and it 
accords with all other laws, so far as they are right, 
and no farther. 
3* 



46 THE HIGHER LAW. 

How presumptuous must it be for man to attempt 
to bind a power which God cannot bind! He re- 
spects liis own work, and legislates in accordance 
with the faculties he lias made; but man legislates 
as he pleases, and then vainly endeavors to conform 
nature to his futile and wicked laws. Such law- 
givers would not hesitate to chastise the sea to make 
it obey them, and they would, be quite as wisely em- 
ployed as they are in laying commands upon con- 
science. 



SECTION II. 

CIVIL GOVERNMENT CANNOT IMPAIR ANY OF THE \AI 
TJRAL RIGHTS OR POWERS OF MANKIND. 

It is not necessary to go into an enumeration of 
the rights or powers of man, in order to perceive 
their true relation to civil law. The summary state 
mentof them in the Declaration of Independence — 
"life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" — is 
quite sufficient. They all stand on the same ba- 
sis, and if one falls, the rest cannot stand. The 
right to life is no more a right than any other en- 

dowmenl of man. It is neither more sacred. ■ 

more inalienable, than the right to liberty. Nor 
is the right to liberty more under the control of law, 
than tin.' right to see, or to eat, or to walk. These 



LIMITATIONS OF CIVIL GOVERNMENT. 47 

last, with various others that might be named, 
are, like life and liberty, conditions of being. "We 
have them from God when we have existence, and 
so long as existence remains these rights must re- 
main, unless taken away by Him who gave them. 

"Why some of these rights are taken away by 
legislation, and others not, can only be accounted 
for by the weakness of man. He has never been 
able, in the utmost stretch of his tyranny, to quite 
subvert the entire endowments of his race. He 
treats his fellow, however, as the robber treats the 
victim of his plunder — that is, strips him of what- 
ever is most available, and lets him go. The slave 
must be allowed life, as that is not a transferable 
commodity, and cannot be seized upon by his mas- 
ter ; but he must give up liberty and the pursuit 
of happiness, for these have a marketable value. 

That human laws have no rightful power over 
the constitutional endowments of man's nature, is a 
truth recognized by the ablest jurists. So obvious 
indeed is this fact, that Blackstone says, the civil 
law can neither take them away, nor by giving them 
its sanction, add any thing to the authority by which 
we hold them. They are just as much ours with- 
out, as with legislation— that is to say, they are 
wholly beyond the reach of any law that man can 
make. 

" Those rights which God and nature have established, 
and are therefore called natural rights, such as are life and 
liberty, need not the aid of human laws to be more effectually 



48 TIIE HIGHER LAW. 

invested in every man than they are ; neither do they re- 
ceive any additional strength, when declared by the muni- 
cipial laws to be inviolable. On the contraiy, no human 
legislature has power to abridge or destroy them, unless the 
owner shall himself commit some act that amounts to a 
forfeiture." Com., Intro.: sec. 2. 

Man can no more change these God-given rights 
of humanity, than he can change the seasons, or 
reverse the laws of physical existence. He may- 
affect to control them, and so he may affect to con- 
trol the winds and tides, but in neither case would 
the attempt deserve serious consideration. This is 
fully declared by the same high authority to which 
I have just referred. 

"The law of nature, being coeval Avith mankind, and 
dictated by God himself, is of course superior in obligation 
to any other. It is binding over all the globe, in all coun- 
tries, and at all times; no human laws are of any validity, 
if contrary to this; and such of them as are valid derive 
all their force, and all their authority mediately or immedi- 
ately, from this original." Com.: sec. 2. 

We may go yet farther, and affirm with Dr. Cud- 
worth, that even God himself cannot force man to 
obey an unrighteous law. 

" We see, then, that it is so far from being true, that all 
moral good and evil, just and unjust, (if they be anything,) 
are made by mere will and arbitrary commands, (as many 
conceive,) that it is not possible that any command of God 
or man should oblige, otherwise than by virtue of that 
which is naturally just. And though particular promises 



LIMITATIONS OF CIVIL GOVERNMENT. 49 

and commands be made by will, yet it is not will, but nature, 
that obligeth to the doing of things promised or commanded, 
or makes them such things as ought to be d-jne. For 
mere will cannot change the moral nature of actions, nor 
the nature of intellectual beings. And, therefore, if there 
were no natural justice, that is, if the rational or intellec- 
tual nature in itself were indeterrained and unobliged to 
any thing, and so destitute of all morality, it were not pos- 
sible that any thing should be made morally good or evil, 
obligatory or unlawful, or that any moral obligation should 
be begotten by any will or command whatsoever." Con- 
cerning Eternal and Immutable Morality: book 1, chap. 2. 

If any object to this position, let them remember 
that God cannot be unjust, and that it is, therefore, 
impossible for him to command what is not just. 

Hence the idea of his requiring obedience to an 
unrighteous law, is merely assumed — no such event 
is possible, but if it were, the result is correctly 
stated above. 

T\ r e obey every law of God, because his immuta- 
ble wisdom and goodness assure us, that he cannot 
require what is not right. His perfections render 
it safe to follow him implicitly, whether we com- 
prehend or not the character of his commands. 
Such assurance, however, we cannot have in refer- 
ence to any other commands. Man has a fallible or 
imperfect goodness; God has an infallible or per- 
fect goodness : therefore we obey the latter always, 
and the former when virtue will permit. Man 
must either arrogate to himself the perfections of 



50 THE IIIGIIEK LAW. 

God, or dismiss all claims to unconditional obedi- 
ence. The higher law is an emanation from the 
higher nature, and from that only. This higher 
nature, be it remembered, is the ample guaranty 
of integrity and wisdom in all the laws which it 
imposes. We submit cheerfully to its requirements, 
because we cannot distrust the source from which 
they proceed. AYe know that God is competent 
to do whatever he will, and that he cannot will 
that which is not for the be>t. 

It is here that human legislation mils. In forget- 
fulness of its own incompetency to change the laws 
of nature, it presumes to deal freely with the con- 
stitutional and inalienable rights of mankind. It 
takes from one and gives to another, as though it 
were charged with revising the Creator's work. 
This utter heedlessness of its true province has 
made human government too frequently a curse in- 
stead of a blessing. The evil, however, is not in the 
institution, but in its abuse. Man has usurped the 
Divine prerogative — that of determining constitu- 
tional right- — and consequently the distribution is 
unequal. By nature, all are equal in fundamental 
immunities, hut society interferes, with its impious 
law. and defeats this benevolent arrangement, by 
making one man a slave, and another his master. 
All this is done in mere wantonness of power, as 
no crime is pretended, and no necessity alleged. 
Rights are taken away from some, because they can 
he taken away, and they are bestowed on others for 



LIMITATIONS OF CIVIL GOVERNMENT. 51 

the same reason. The cause of such perversions 
of civil authority, is substantially the same that 
has led to every other species of human wickedness 
— an evil heart. From this corrupt fountain have 
proceeded forth, in all ages, not only murders, thefts, 
and adulteries, but oppressions and tyrannies of 
every sort. 



SECTION III. 

CIVIL GOVERNMENT CANNOT RELEASE MAX FROM HIS 
RESPONSIBILITY TO GOD. 

The following, among many other reasons, are 
decisive on this point : 

1. Civil government is itself subject to the Di- 
vine law. "The powers that be are ordained of 
God," and are therefore responsible to him. This 
could not be otherwise, unless on the monstrous 
supposition of atheism — that there is no God. In 
this case there would be no power above civil rulers, 
and the practical effect would be the same as if gov- 
ernment were not subject to Divine authority, 
though in such circumstances the exemption would 
not affect government alone; it would release sub- 
jects as well as rulers from all religious obligations. 
We should then have only the accident of power 
as the basis of human laws, and any one might 



53 THE HIGHER LAW. 

disregard them without incurring guilt. There 
would be no fear of God to restrain — no hope of 
heaven to reward. All motives to obedience would 
be cut off, except those which flow from temporal 
considerations. 

But civil government has its origin in the Divine 
law, not barely from a simple decree to that effect. 
The institution rests upon much more than a statu- 
tory basis. It has the relation of an effect to its 
cause. If we take away from human laws the 
support which they derive from religion, their sta- 
bility and usefulness are at an end : the foundation 
is sapped, and the social fabric precipitated into 
ruin. 

"As the religion of an oath is a necessary vinculum of 
civil society; so obligation in conscience, respecting the 
Deity as its original, and as the punisher of the violation 
thereof, is the very foundation of all civil sovereignty ; for 
pacts and covenants, (into which some would resolve all 
civil power,) without this obligation in conscience, are nothing 
but mere words and breath ; and the laws and commands of 
civil sovereigns do not make obligation, but pre-suppose it, 
as a thing in order of nature before them, and without 
which they would be invalid." — Dr. Cudworth, Intellectual 
System: vol. 2, j } - HI- 

We have shown that no command of man is 
binding when opposed to the law of God, hence it 
follows that the laws of men are utterly incapable 
of releasing us in any measure from the claims of 
the higher law. How much stronger is the argu- 



LIMITATIONS OF CIVIL GOVERNMENT. 53 

merit, then, "when we add to this the fact, that human 
government is itself subject in all things to this 
very law ! How can it release others, when it can- 
not even release itself? 

2. But this is further evident from the condition 
of all legislators and rulers. Men never lose their 
individuality. Though in authority, they are still 
but men, and act as men. It is not as legislators 
or governors only that they are known to God. 
There are no mere officers. The functions of gov- 
ernment are joined to the other responsibilities of 
individual and personal character. They are duties 
which men perform as individuals, and for which 
they are held responsible, precisely as they are for 
other duties. It is said that "kings can do no 
wrong," but God does not say it, neither will he 
judge them as kings, but as men. The acts of a 
government are acts of individuals — of individual 
men, whose accountability is in no respect changed 
by their official character. The delusion, therefore, 
that civil duties carry with them exemption from 
religious obligations, is most unfounded. There is 
no reason why office or power of this kind should 
have any effect, that will not apply just as well to 
any other office or power. The president and di- 
rectors of a bank, or of a manufacturing company, 
might, with equal propriety, attempt to set aside the 
Divine law. We admit that civil government is, 
in some respects, more important than the institu- 
tions just named; but this only enhances t lie obli- 



54 THE HIGHER LAW. 

gation of those who administer it, towards Him "by 
whom kings rule and princes decree justice." 

3. Another truth of great weight on this subject 
is, that civil officers, even the highest of them, are 
the servants of the people. This is a doctrine rec- 
ognized, not only in our own country, but where- 
ever civil liberty is known. With the people is 
sovereignty, so far as it may rightfully be anywhere 
among men ; and their rulers are their servants. 
These govermental servants are employed as the 
police of the body politic. Their services are de- 
manded, on the same principle that we employ the 
services of other men — that is, because they are 
beneficial. The physician, the lawyer, or the me- 
chanic, is not more a servant of the public, nor a 
servant of the public for any other reason than the 
legislator or the governor. The idea that these 
servants of the people have power to cancel the 
law of God, is exceedingly ridiculous. Had not 
kings, and others entrusted with the duties of gov- 
ernment, entered into a conspiracy against the rights 
of mankind, so great an absurdity would either 
never have been known, or been known only as an 
odious usurpation. 

If rulers have any power to release us from the 
Divine law, they have it from those who employ 
them — that is, tin- governed give their governors 
authority to cancel such obligations. The act of 
release i^. then, not the act of governors, but of the 
people whom they govern. It cannot be otherwise, 



LIMITATIONS OF CIVIL GOVERNMENT. 55 

for "governments derive their just powers from the 
consent of the governed," and if the people are 
released from the higher law, they are self-released. 
It is their own act, and they alone are responsible. 

4. It gives to man a power which, as we have 
shown, God does not possess. God cannot enact an 
unrighteous law ; he cannot, therefore, require obe- 
dience to such a law. In other words, he cannot 
release his creatures from the obligation of justice, 
and at the same time exercise government over 
them. But if human legislation is supreme, justice 
may be set aside, and man may be compelled to 
obey an unjust law. And if justice may be set 
aside in one instance, it may in many — in all in- 
stances. Thus, on this hypothesis, justice might be 
banished from the world, and that, too, by the author- 
ity of God. Most, it is true, who claim uncon- 
ditional supremacy for civil law, are atheists ; but 
men professing religion have asserted this horrid 
doctrine, and quoted scripture to justify it. Surely, 
they could not have seen its consequences, or they 
would never have given it countenance. 

5. A government having power to dispense with 
the eternal principles of justice, established by the 
Creator, and wrought into the human constitution, 
would be the most terrific engine of oppression that 
can be conceived. Satanic malice could invent 
in 'thing worse. It would be a mockery of God — ■ 
undoing at will all he has done, and trampling with 
impunity upon the moral sense of all his creatures. 



56 THE HIGHER LAW. 

Such a fearful power — such a diabolical institution, 
we may be certain has no existence, save among 
the traitorous imaginings of willful tyrants and 
their obsequious dupes. 

6. The doctrine of a future judgment, or of any 
judgment whatever, on the part of. God. is rendered 
impossible. If men are under no higher obliga- 
tions than to human government, they of course 
have nothing to fear beyond this life, and nothing 
in this life, except the civil law. It matters not 
what we call this monstrous perversion ; it may 
bear the outward stamp of atheism or of deism or 
of Christianity, but it is essentially anti-Christian, 
and worthy only of our deepest abhorrence. 



SECTION IV. 

CIVIL GOVERNMENT CANNOT CHANGE Tin: NATUEE OP 
VICE AND VIRTUE. 

There is an immutable distinction between right 

and wrong, which no human power can subvert. 
This fixed character of virtue, and its opposite, i> one 
of the most effectual barriers to the progress of tyr- 
anny. Could the wicked who bear vulv, by any 
means change the nature of things, then their decre- 
tal-, however inimical to man or his Maker, might 
put on the garb of virtue, and challenge the respect 



LIMITATIONS OF CIVIL GOVERNMENT. 57 

of mankind. But no such deception is possible. 
Vice must appeal a* vice ; it must act on the world 
as vice, and as vice be detested and spurned by all 
the human race. The heart of man can form no al- 
liance with it — none, at least, till conscience has 
ceased to perform its functions — nor can even the 
intellectual powers be made to approve it. Un- 
schooled and unprompted, we instantly repel it in 
its grosser kinds, as the baleful destroyer of our hap- 
piness. Pope's well known lines are to the point : 

" Vice is a monster of such hateful mien, 
That to be hated, needs but to be seen." 

The same is true of virtue. It is an essential and 
indestructible principle. We approve it intuitively. 
and covet it as our best good. The very hatred of 
vice implies an opposite, which we love. Virtue is 
so interwoven with our nature, and so congenial to 
its interests, that it is approved by those who do 
not practice it. 

The impotence of human power, when directed 
against virtue itself, is well expressed by Dr. Brown : 

"A sovereign, it has been truly said, may enact and re- 
scind laws, but lie cannot create or annihilate a single vir- 
tue. It might be amusing to consider, not one sovereign 
only, but all the sovereigns of the different nations of the 
earth, endeavoring to change a virtue into a vice — a vice 
into a virtue. If an imperial enactment of a senate of kings 
were to declare, that it was in future to be a crime for a 
mother to love her child — for a child to venerate his pa- 
rent — if high privileges were to be attached to the most un- 
grateful, and an act of gratitude to a benefactor declared to 



58 THE HIGHER LAW. 

be a capital offence — would the heart of man obey this 
impotent legislation ? Would remorse and self approbation 
vary with the command of man, or of any number of men? 
And would he, who, notwithstanding these laws, had obsti- 
nately persisted in the illegality of loving his parent, or his 
benefactor, tremble to meet his own conscience with the 
horror which the parricide feels ? There is, indeed, a power 
by which 'princes decree justice;' but it is a power above 
the mere voice of kings — a power which has previously 
fixed in the breasts of those who receive the decree, a love 
of the very virtue which kings, even when kings are most 
virtuous, can only enforce. And it is well for man, that the 
feeble authorities of this earth cannot change the sentiments 
of our hearts with the same facility as they can throw fetters 
on our hands. There would then, indeed, be no hope to 
the oppressed. The greater the oppression, the stronger 
motive would there be to make obedience to oppression a 
virtue, and every species of guilt, which the powerful might 
love to exercise, amiable in the eyes of the miserable vic- 
tims. All virtue, in such circumstances, would soon per- 
ish from the earth. A single tyrant would be sufficient to 
destroy, what all the tyrants that have ever disgraced this 
moral scene, have been incapable of extinguishing — the re- 
morse which was felt in the bosom of him who could order 
every thing but vice and virtue — and the scorn, and the 
sorrow, and the wrath, of every noble heart, in the contem- 
plation of his guilty power. 

" Nature has not thrown us upon the world with such 
feeble principles as these. She has given us virtues of 
which no power can deprive us, and has fixed in the soul 
of him whom more than fifty nations obey, a restraint on his 
power, from which the servile obedience of all the nations 
on the globe could not absolve him. There may be flatter- 



LIMITATIONS OF CIVIL GOVERNMENT. 59 

ers to surround a tyrant's throne, with knees ever ready to 
bow on the very blood with which his steps are stained, and 
with voices ever ready to applaud the guilt that has been 
already perpetrated, and to praise, even with a sort of pro- 
phetic quickness of discernment, the cruelties in prospect 
which they only anticipate. There may be servile warriors, 
to whom it is indifferent whether they succor or oppress, 
whether they enslave or free, if they have only drowned in 
blood, with sufficient promptness, the thousands of human 
beings whom they have been commanded to sweep from 
the earth. There may be statesmen as servile, to whom the 
people are nothing, and to whom every thing is dear, but 
liberty and virtue. These eager emulators of each other's 
baseness, may sound forever in the ears of him on whose 
vices their own power depends, that what he has willed 
must be right, because he has willed it — and priests still 
more base, from the very dignity of that station which they 
dishonor, not content with proclaiming that crimes are right, 
may add their consecrating voice, and proclaim that they 
are holy, because they are deeds of a vicegerent of that Ho- 
liness which is supreme. But the flatteries, which only 
sound in the ear, or play, perhaps, with feeble comfort 
around the surface of the heart, are unable to reach that 
c eeper-seated sense of guilt within." — Philosophy of the 
Human Mind: lect. 15. 

The changeless nature of moral principle, and the 
necessity which it throws upon legislation, of con- 
forming its character to the moral law, are the bul- 
wark of human rights. When g< >vernment deviates 
from the standard of rectitude, it produces ruin, and 
all the forces of nature engage against it, or, rather, 
for its restoration to purity. As the result of this 



60 THE HIGHER LAW. 

conservatism, which nature always exerts, govern- 
ment grows weaker as it grows vicious, until it be- 
comes too vicious to be endured, and then it is over- 
thrown. This is the origin of most revolutions. 
That there have been instances of the exact re- 
verse — of good governments overthrown by national 
degeneracy — does not weaken the argument, but 
strengthens it, rather ; showing that the govern- 
mental institution must conform to the moral con- 
dition of those among whom it exists. It is not 
pretended that the moral principle is always equally 
well developed in communities, or that people are, 
by any means, incorruptible. Private citizens, as 
well as public functionaries, nations as well as indi- 
viduals, may become depraved ; but this does not 
prove that virtue itself is corruptible. It only 
proves that men may depart from virtue. 

This immutable distinction between vice and vir- 
tue is, in fact, the only basis of character and of law. 
If good and evil were the same, or convertible into 
each other, courts of equity could nut exist, nor 
could there be any foundation for rewards or pun- 
ishments, since it would make no difference whether 
people did right or wrong. All law is of necessity 
based upon this pre-existing and ineradicable dif- 
ference in the nature of things, and to subvert it is 
as impossible as it would be to change the order of 
the universe. 



POWERS OF CIVIL GOVERNMENT. 61 



CHAPTER V. 
THE POWERS OF CIYIL GOVERNMENT. 



As might be expected, these powers are exactly 
the opposite of the propositions contained in the 
foregoing chapter. They may be stated thus : 

1. Civil government can maintain the rights of 
conscience. 

2. It can maintain the other natural rights and 
powers of mankind. 

3. It can enforce obedience to the law of God. 

4. It can maintain the immutable distinction 
between vice and virtue. 



SECTION I. 

CIVIL GOVERNMENT CAN MAINTAIN THE RIGHTS OF 
CONSCIENCE. 

The end of government is conservation — not the 
conservation of itself, as too many suppose, but the 
conservation of the rights of the people who live 
4 



62 THE HIGHER LAV,'. 

under it. The happiness of mankind depend 3 very 
much upon their adherence to that standard of 
moral rectitude which God has established in their 
own consciences, and in his holy word. To do right 
is a privilege no less than a duty. Man, being con- 
stituted as lie is, could not have laid upon him a 
heavier infliction than to be obliged to do wrong. 
It would be a perpetual crucifixion of himself, so 
long as any sense of moral obligation, or any per- 
ception of the excellence of virtue, and the loath- 
someness of vice, remained to him. Ixion, chained 
to his wheel, had a more tolerable fate. Such an 
one might truly say, "0 wretched man that I 
am! who shall deliver me from the body of this 
death?" To take away all vice, and all tendency 
to vice, and thereby bring in the blessings of ever- 
lasting righteousness, were the great objects of re- 
demption — that higher and most wonderful act of 
the Divine government. Human laws, a1 best, tall 
very far short of attempting complete mora] excel- 
lence. For the fullness of virtue we must depend 
on God — on the higher law — while to man, as a 
co-worker, is left the regulation and guardianship 
of character, in a few subordinate particulars. We 
may derive comfort from the fires kindled in our 
dwellings, but it is nol possible for artificial tires 
to supply the place of the sun : they are convenient 
and useful, but altogether incapable of meeting the 
wants of physical existence. 60 government may 
do something towards conserving the morals of the 



POWERS OF CIVIT. GOVERNMENT. 63 

world, but our main dependence must be upon a 
higher power. 

In protecting the exercise of conscience, civil 
government is co-operative villi the higher law. 
.Viid this is its province always. It may contribute 
to tin' assistance and perfection of natural endow- 
ments, but not to their destruction or perversion. 
Like the daily labor of man, by which he aids the 
productiveness of nature, and therein* gains a bet- 
ter subsistence, government enhances — if it be not 
misdirected — that good order in society which na- 
ture designed, but which, < iwing to human depravity, 
is too little prevalent, without the aid of civil au- 
thority. The law not only prohibits all injury of 
the moral faculty, bul stimulates its activity, by 
exacting the fulfillment of equitable obligations. 
If men do not pay honest debts, provision is m 
for the forcible seizure and sale of enough of their 
effects to liquidate the demand, and satisfy the 
claims of justice. 



SECTION II. 

CITIL GOVERNMENT CAN MAINTAIN Till': NATURAL RI< 
\M> POWERS OF MANKIND. 

We might have included, without impropriety, 
under this head, what we have advanced in the fore- 



64: THE HIGHER LAW. 

going section, as conscience is unquestionably one 
of our natural powers, and the right to use it, one 
of our natural rights. But the transcendent import- 
ance of the moral faculty, in all discussions of this 
nature, renders it desirable to give greater promi- 
nence to its claims, than could be done in a hasty 
sketch, where many particulars were grouped to- 
gether. Conscience is not only a natural power, the 
exercise of which is guarantied to us by the same 
principle that ensures us the use of our hands and 
feet, our eyes and ears, but it is a part of man, vastly 
higher in its character — so much higher, that with- 
out it, right and wrong could not be affirmed of man: 
he would have no moral character whatever — he 
would not be man. "While civil government is 
charged with guarding this fountain of good and 
evil, it is also charged with preserving all the vari- 
ous subordinate natural rights of men. These 1 need 
not name in detail. They include everything be- 
stowed by Creative goodness : the right to be, to be 
human beings, to provide for all our wants, to use 
and enjoy all our faculties and powers ; and if there 
be any other conceivable right, imparted by the Cre- 
ator, which may come within the province of human 
guardianship, it is provided for and conserved by 
the civil law. 

For the maintenance of these rights, government 
was instituted. It has no other purpose with regard 
to them. Destroy them it certainly cannot, without 
the most willful and wicked perversion of its nature. 



POWERS OF CIVIL GOVERNMENT. 65 

As there is strength in union, by the coalition of 
men for the common defence, a power is brought 
into existence for securing public order and indi- 
vidual rights, which must otherwise have remainec 
unknown. One man, however wise or powerful, 
cannot protect himself against all other men ; he 
might be injured or destroyed, in ways too numer- 
ous to mention, if compelled to be his own protector. 
But by entering into the general confederacy fa* 
maintaining the rights of man, he gains protectioi 
with very little trouble. Just as a man can crossa 
bridge by paying a trilling toll, whereas he wou'd 
be wholly unable to build a bridge for his own rc- 
commodation. So with public roads, and almost 
all other things of a public nature — all profession, 
trades, and business pursuits, except so far as tbey 
minister directly to the personal wants of those Mho 
pursue them, are based upon the same principle. 
They are possible, because many share in them, md 
are benefited by them. Physicians, lawyers, and 
mechanics are sustained by the many — that is. by 
the public. ISTo individual would be able to meet 
the expense of such assistance, if he must purcliase 
the entire of a professional man's services, in order 
to have his services at all. But as many are in like 
circumstances with himself, their common want ren- 
ders it possible, by a division of his labors, for each 
one to have all he needs, and at a moderate expense. 
Thus is it with government. If the task of self-pro- 
tection was thrown upon each one, apart from this 



60 THE HIGHEE LAW. 

arrangement, it would be wholly impossible, because 
one man has not the strength of a hundred, or a thou- 
sand, or a million. In the confederacy — that is, 
i rider civil government — he, in effect, increases his 
own powers indefinitely; and it is the only way he 
can increase them, except by science. Knowledge 
is power, but it is not in all cases equivalent to the 
power of coalition. 

This tremendous engine — public authority — be- 
iig instituted solely for the good of society, should 
be employed for no other purpose than to keep the 
rithts and immunities of such society intact. If 
duerted from its original design, and made to ope- 
iv ". with all its crushing power, in favor of itself, 
or of any particular member in society, to the ex- 
clusion of others, nothing can do greater mischief. 
In ^uch case, either society, as a whole, becomes the 
victim of ils own institution, or the injury falls upon 
son.e particular class of persons, who are thereby 
Stri >ped of their rights, and ruined by what should 
have been their inviolable protection. 

T> cut off from equal privileges, whole races of 
men, under the pretext of government, is robbery, 
perpetrated in the name of order — the rankest in- 
justice, committed in the name of justice. It is in 
politics as it would be in medicine, if the physician 
should give fatal poisons where he ought to give on- 
ly salutary remedies. The higher law of nature, 
and of nature's God, on which the civil law is found- 
ed, has made the essential rights of men inalienable ; 



POWERS OF CIVIL GOVERNMENT. 67 

and though they may be obstructed, they can never 
be destr< >yed. So far as conscience is concerned, the 
unjust law is, in fact, no law, and should be treated 
as a nullity, because it is unjust. But justice and 
power are not always combined, and hence that may 
pass as law, and be enforced as law, which merits 
only detestation. Of this character are all govern- 
ments not strictly conformed to the law of God ; but 
perversion has its limits, and wicked governments 
can only make impotent attempts against the con- 
stitution of things. They may strip a man of his 
rights by an unrighteous decree, but their decree is 
null and void before God. The higher law — the 
law of the universe — the law of the uncreated God — 
shall stand, in spite of any adverse legislation on the 
part of his creatures. "What that law gives belongs 
to those to whom it is given, until the law which 
gave it shall take it away. Man can take away 
property, but he cannot take away rights ; he can 
take away life, but not the right to life. 



SECTION ITI. 

CIVIL GOVERNMENT CAN ENFORCE OBEDIENCE TO THE 
LAW OF GOD. 

We have already virtually affirmed as much as is 
contained in this proposition, but to complete the 
illustration of the principles laid down, it is neces- 



68 THE HIGHER LAW. 

sary to vary their application. Conscience, and all 
other natural powers and rights of humanity, are, in 
the fullest sense of the term, laws of God. They 
embody his will, and constitute unalterable condi- 
tions of being and of happiness. The maintenance 
and enforcement of these — the avowed object of all 
just government — is to enforce obedience to the Di- 
vine law. But these natural laws have a special 
interpretation, which is also to be enforced by the 
civil law. The Scriptures establish government, 
not merely for the sake of conserving those few ob- 
vious rights which are indispensable to the bare exist- 
ence of civil society, but for the securing, as far as 
may be, of that moral excellence which is essential 
to eternal life. That revelation has, at least, co-or- 
dinate authority with nature, as a foundation of civil 
government, is very clearly stated by Blackstone: 

" Providence, in compassion to the frailty, the imperfec- 
tion, and the blindness of human reason, hath been plea-ed, 
at sundry times and in divers manners, to discover and en- 
force its laws by an immediate and direct jevelation. The 
doctrines thus delivered, we call the revealed or Divine law, 
and they are to be found only in the Holy Scriptures. 
These precepts, when revealed, are found, upon comparison, 
to be really a part of the original law of nature, as they tend, 
in all their consequences, to man's felicity. But we are not 
thence to conclude that the knowledge of these truths was 
attainable by reason, in its present corrupted state; since 
we find that, until they were revealed, they were hid from 
the wisdom of ages. As, then, the moral precepts of this 
law are indeed of the same original with those of the law of 



POWERS OF CIVIL GOVERNMENT. 69 

nature, so their intrinsic obligation is of cqunl strength and 
perpetuity. Yet, undoubtedly, the revealed law has in- 
finitely more authenticity than that moral system which is 
framed by ethical writers, and denominated the natural 
law; because one is the law of rature, expressly declared 
so to be by God himself; the other is only what, by the as- 
sistance of human reason, we imagine to be such. If we 
could be as certain of the latter as we are of the former, 
both would have an equal authority; but, till then, they can 
never be put in any competition together." — Com., Intro. : 
sec. 2. 

The Bible says, " Thou shalt not kill ;" and this 
command, it will not be denied, is entirely conso- 
nant with the dictates of natural justice ; we, there- 
fore, in prohibiting murder, are compelling obedi- 
ence to the Bible ; and that, too, in accordance with 
tlic most enlightened principles of legislation. It is 
not pretended that all the duties enjoined by the 
law of God come within the cognizance of civil law. 
Both nature and revelation teach many things that 
cannot be made the subject of legislation, because 
men have not the wisdom necessary to make or ad- 
minister laws in relation to these duties. Nor are 
such laws absolutely essential to the existence of 
civil society, the maintenance of which is the great 
object of human government. 

Another reason for this limitation of political au- 
thority is, that the government of God depends not 
altogether upon man for the execution of its laws. 
Offences against nature are always partly punished 
4* 



70 THE HIGHER LAW. 

by nature, and where such offences are not against 
society, the laws of society have nothing to do with 
them, and their correction should be left entirely to 
nature. It is the province of the higher law to en- 
force its own sanctions, whether of punishment or 
reward, but it may employ, for this purpose, within 
certain limits, or, in other words, as far as the good 
order of society demands, the subordinate agency of 
human government. 

But the power of civil law, to enforce the require- 
ments of the Divine law, rests chiefly on its relation 
to the latter. The Divine law is supreme, and it is 
not possible that a subordinate law, or the law of a 
subordinate power, should be rightfully at variance 
with that which is above it. Hence, in this confed- 
eracy, the laws of a state are considered null when 
they are not conformed to the constitution of the 
United States, and, in like manner, all enactments 
of Congress and of state legislatures, are void, if not 
in accordance with the constitutions to which these 
legislative bodies severally owe their existence. In 
every thing requisite, the lower law is bound to sus- 
tain the higher — 'the authority derived, that from 
which it is derived. This must be especially true 
in the case before us, because the higher law com- 
mands all right, and prohibits all wrong ; so that the 
law of man, unless perverted, is, of necessity pro- 
motive of the Divine law. 



POWERS OF CIVIL GOVERNMENT. 71 



SECTION IV. 

CIVIL GOVERNMENT CAN MAINTAIN THE IMMUTABLE 
DISTLNCTION BETWEEN VICE AND VIRTUE. 

The distinction between vice and virtue is so fixed 
and immutable, that it can neither be created nor 
destroyed by human authority ; but still, a power 
which can neither create nor destroy, may subserve 
other purposes, equally important to the social sys- 
tem. The lexicographer does not originate words, 
or their meanings, and yet his labors are useful. By 
collecting words and their meanings, as they exist, 
he becomes a convenient, though not an infallible 
exponent of the language. So the civil code may 
be allowed to represent justice, as established by the 
Creator. But with the legislator, as with the lexi- 
cographer, there is no infallibility ; either may err, 
and erring, may pervert the truth, instead of main- 
taining it. jSTor is there any security against evils 
of this kind, except the strength of those inherent 
principles, which are outraged by such infractions. 
A bad law will be nearly or quite inoperative among 
a good people, for the same reason that a blunder- 
ing, imperfect book is contemned by the intelli- 
gent — namely, deficiency of character, Such a law, 
not having the qualities demanded by an upright 
people, would be instinctively rejected as a nui- 
sance. It would not promote the object of legisla- 



72 THE HIGHER LAW. 

tion, and could not be endured without great afflic- 
tion. Law is acceptable among the virtuous, just 
in proportion to its goodness — that is, just in pro- 
portion as it is adapted to promote virtue and sup- 
press vice. It has ever been the professed object of 
legislation to attain this end, and all nations, of 
every age, have attempted to fix their civil regula- 
tions upon what to them appeared to be the dictates 
of justice. The following description of law, which 
Mr. Chitty pronounces the " most perfect that can 
either be found or conceived," was given by De- 
mosthenes, and shows conclusively, what were the 
views of mankind in the earliest ages : 

" The design and object of laws is, to ascertain what is 
just, honorable, and expedient; and when thai is discovered, 
it is proclaimed as a general ordinance, equal and impartial 
to all. This is the origin of law, which, for various reasons, 
all are under obligation to obey, but especially because all 
law is the invention and gift of heaven, the sentiment of 
wise men, the correction of every offence, and the general 
compact of the state; to live in conformity with which is 
the duty of every individual in society." — Orat. 1, cont. 
Aristogit. 

The fact seems to be, that human law is an in- 
strumentality, which the Great Lawgiver uses to 
further the execution of his own eternal statutes. 
Many of these statutes are so profound, that the for- 
mal agency of man cannot be employed in giving 
them effect ; but there are others more palpable, 
and to aid in the maintenance of such, civil law was 



POWERS OF CIVIL GOVERX3IENT. 73 

instituted. Hence, it is the object of onr laws every 
where, to condemn what the reason and conscience 
of mankind condemn, and to uphold what reason 
and conscience approve. The laws are only a writ- 
ten embodiment of the public mind on the subject 
of morals — of morals as they appertain to the most 
common and tangible rights of human beings. The 
people — created to feel the need of justice and pro- 
tection — express, in the form of written laws, their 
sense of these things, and make the declaration of 
principles a rule of action. Such is civil law. In 
nothing either more or less than an effort to promote 
virtue, and to prevent or punish vice, in accordance 
with nature and the word of God. 

Government has this power of co-operation in sup- 
port of right, on the same ground that man, and all 
other creatures, have power to live according to the 
constitution that God has given them. And the 
whole design of the institution is to ensure conform- 
ity to the higher law, which he has thus interwoven 
with their very nature, as well as amplified and re- 
affirmed in his holy word. In this, its true light, 
civil government appears as a divinely appointed 
means of accomplishing the good order essential u> 
the happiness of society. It is emphatically a Di- 
vine institution, and when conducted as it should 
be, has the sanction of the Most High. This agrees 
with the explicit language of scripture, " Submit 
yourselves to every ordinance of man for the Lord's 
sake : whether it be to the king as supreme ; or 



74 TriE HIGHER LAW. 

unto governors, as unto those that are sent by him 
for the punishment of evil doers, and for the praise 
of them that do well." The duty of submission, is 
here enforced with all those qualifications which 
ever pertain to the supremacy of conscience. It is 
only while kings and governors rule as they should, 
that wo are to submit to them for the Lord's sake. 
They have authority, and have it from him, but it 
is only authority to do right. He releases none of 
his creatures from their obligations to him, nor gives 
any the right to require of them what he would not. 



OBEDIENCE TO CIVIL GOVERNMENT. 75 



CHAPTER VI. 
OBEDIEXCE TO CIYIL GOYEKNMENT. 



Fkom the preceding chapters, it will very readily 
be inferred, that obedience to civil law is a duty, in 
all cases, when the law is what it should be. A 
right law, though made by man, is, to all intents 
and purposes, a law of God ; because it is sanc- 
tioned by him, and may even be said to have been 
made at his command. But it must be kept in 
mind, that the duty of obedience depends entirely 
on the character of the law. God, who is the foun- 
tain of all legislative power, gives no authority to 
make a bad law — that is to say, he gives no author- 
i subverl his own laws, which are all good. If 
bad laws were obligatory, then the Divine law 
might be nullified by wicked men, whenever they 
chose, and society, released from all obligation to 
heaven, would be under the necessity of plunging 
into the depths of wickedness, at the bidding of 
government. "Whether or not the Most High has, 
in this way, left the claims of his own law contin- 
gent, is a question too plain for argument. It sup- 
poses that the inferior authority can annihilate the 



76 THE IIIGHER LAW. 

superior : or, in other words, that the decree of 
man can set aside the decree of God. Such a 
result would be the reverse of all established ideas 
among men, and contrary to all known possibilities 
in the nature of things. The supremacy of God 
is not conditional, but unconditional ; and the su- 
premacy of his law is not mutable, but immutable. 
And yet, on an imagined necessity of conforming 
to the requirements of human law, whether right or 
wrong, has been based every tyrannical government 
that has cursed the world. Perceiving that they 
had a right to do some things, rulers and law-ma- 
kers have presumed to do whatever they pleased ; 
and had the extreme audacity to claim Divine author- 
ity for all their enormous wickedness, as well as for 
their most innocent and useful acts. They have 
forgotten that law-makers are always under law to 
God, and that law itself must be lawful, in order to 
have authority. 

It is well known that in all human legislation, 
whenever there is a conflict in the lavs, the higher 
authority controls the lower. The law of a -ingle 
state never sets aside a law of the confederacy to 
which that state belongs; nor can a legislative 
enactment subvert the constitution, from which 
such legislature derives its power. Hence, all anal- 
ogy, and all history, as well as all reason, are 
against this absurd pretension of wicked men, who 
claim for human laws that infallibility and suprem- 
acy which belong only to Almighty God. 



OBEDIENCE TO CIVIL GOVERNMENT. 77 

Notwithstanding no reason can be given for this 
foolish and barefaced usurpation of authority, most 
governments continue to maintain it. It is true, 
there are moments of relaxation, in which a sort 
of political toleration prevails, but ever and anon 
this old intolerance springs up — showing that its 
temporary suspension was accidental, and that the 
essential principles of human freedom are not yet 
well understood, except by a very few. "Whenever 
occasion offers, almost every government is ready 
to insist upon the fullest obedience, without any 
reference to principles of rectitude. The perform- 
ance of some contract, or the carrying out of a 
compromise, or the maintenance of some ancient 
usage, is considered a valid reason for enforcing 
law to the uttermost. It may be, that the object 
proposed by the law, ranks among the darkest of 
crimes, yet this, according to the theory under con- 
sideration, does not absolve the subject : the state 
must judge, for him in matters of morality, and his 
conscience must be committed to public keeping. 
This at once destroys all individual responsibility, 
and makes the state, or its officers, answerable for 
the guilt of obedience to wicked laws. But Chris- 
tians, well knowing that such an excuse could never 
avail them, have uniformly contemned the laws ot" 
men, whenever such laws could not be kept with- 
out violating the law of God. Here has been the 
battle ground of the saints in all ages. The several 
persecutions through which the church has passed, 



78 THE HIGHER LAW. 

have all taken their rise at this point. The author- 
ity of heaven and earth, having come into conflict, 
believers have had to " choose whom they would 
serve." No one in the least acquainted with the 
Bible, or with church history, will need any con- 
firmation of this statement. Vfe may, however, 
refer to one instance, in which the conflict of author- 
ity was so direct as to admit of no possible mistake, 
and the approval of the act of disobedience so im- 
mediately manifest, as to leave no doubt. The three 
worthies who were cast into the fire by the king of 
Babylon, had. every assurance of the will of their 
earthly sovereign, and that will was to them the 
highest of human laws, yet. because of its palpable 
contrariety to the will of God, they deliberately 
mid repeatedly disobeyed it. Other instances, of a 
similar kind, are frequent in both the Old and ISTew 
Testaments. But in the vast majority of instances, 
where believers have been called to suffer for obey- 
ing- God rather than man, their recompense has 
been defered to " the resurrection of the just." ]STo 
miraculous deliverance awaited them, nor did they 
exped any ; they Mere contented to leave the time, 
and the measure of their reward, to Him who had 
I them " to glory and virtue." 
It is evident, that religion could not exisl <>n the 
. if God had given to man such authority as 
our politicians claim. For a law might at any time 
bemad,', prohibiting the worship of Jehovah, and 
abolishing any or all other of his laws. Such pre- 



OBEDIENCE TO CIVIL GOVERNMENT. 79 

tensions arc therefore openly hostile to Christianity. 

Religion cannot co-exist with them, nor they with it. 

But, before leaving this part of onr subject, it 

may be well to notice yet further, on whom rests 
the responsibility of deciding- the question of obe- 
dience. It is the individual, ever. Each human \S 
being must decide for himself. God deals with men 
simply : he knows nothing of transferred obligations, 
or of corporate responsibilities. Dr. Paley, though 
generally too much inclined to the doctrine of expe- 
diency, on mural and political questions, is very 
explicit here. Speaking of the duty of resistance, 
he says : 

"But who shall judge this? We answer, every man for 
himself In ccnteniions between the sovereign and the 
subject, the parties acknowledge no common arbitrator; 
and it would be absurd to refer the decision to those whose 
conduct has provoked the question, and whose own interest, 
authority, and fate, are immediately concerned in it. — Mor. 
and Pol. Phil : book 5, ch. 3. 

Indeed, without this right, no man could main- 
tain even his own life, or his rationality, to say 
nothing of his virtue. For the civil law might 
command him to kill himself, or to destroy his men- 
tal faculties, and his advisers might concur with 
the law in this abominable requisition: so that if 
the decision was made dependent upon any other 
than the individual himself, there would be no 
security. 



80 THE HIGHEE LAW. 



CHAPTER VII. 
niPROYEMEXTS IX CIVIL GOYERXMEXT. 



To all who survey the history of mankind, it must 
appear remarkable that governmental reforms have 
so seldom been conducted in a peaceful and happy 
manner. They have generally been occasions not 
only of violence and bloodshed, but of every sort of 
injustice and extravagance. Rulers have contended 
for the full measure of power, with which custom 
or accident had invested them ; and the people, as 
">med to perpetual vassalage, have struggled 
through disastrous wars, to achieve a modicum of 
liberty. 

This unhappy state of things is as needless as it 
is irrational. To amend a government, should be 
as easy a- to mend a road, <>r to repair a piece of 
machinery. A- government originates with the 
people, they should assume its correction, whenever 
and wherever there is the least necessity. Its cor- 
rection is their work, and they should enter upon it 
freely at all times. To charge them with insurrec- 
tionary and seditious designs, when they only pro- 



IMPROVEMENTS EN' crVIL GOVERNMENT. 81 

pose wholsomc changes in civil polity, is the basest 
treachery. It was probably for this reason, that in 
most of our state governments, the right of the peo- 
ple peaceably to assemble and petition for a redress 
of grievances, is especially recognized in the consti- 
tution. But the right extends much farther than 
that of mere petition. The people, as proprietors of 
government, have full power to introduce changes 
without the formality of petitioning. And in too 
many instances, they have relied on the efficacy of 
supplications, when they should have resorted to 
more certain measures. If rulers are servants, then 
the case is clear. Servants may be petitioned, but 
the more common and more appropriate method is 
to instruct. The cause of despotism lies, no doubt, 
in human depravity ; but its proximate cause is ig- 
norance and want of concert among the people. 
Rulers have no power in themselves, and can do 
nothing, except as they draw to their aid those who 
are disposed to uphold them. An army, well paid, 
flattered with titles, and supplied with the muni- 
tions of war. is the chief dependence of all despots. 
And, united with the other causes just named — that 
is. with ignorance and distraction among the popu- 
lace — this single means has hitherto been found 
sufficient to enslave most of the nations of the earth, 
through every period of their history. 

The remedy is easily suggested. Let men use 
their reason. Let them act as rational beings, and 
not as "brute beasts, made to be*' oppressed — or 



82 THE HIGHER LAW. 

"destroyed," if they resisl oppression. Hitherto, 
there has been so little concert in action, that tyrants 
have found it no difficult matter to enslave t] 
from whom they derived all their power. By divi- 
ding the people, and making them oppose each 
other, they have banished liberty and perpetuated 
despotism, from age to age. And governments, 
thus perverted have become engines of oppression 
to the very people who gave them existence, and 
who alone are interested in their success. Such 
a perversion, is both unnatural and unnecessary. 
Civil government was not designed as an inflic- 
tion — as a judgment : it is not something which the 
people are predestinated to endure, however vicious 
it may become; but it is a beneficent institution, orig- 
inating in the wants of society, and always subject 
to such modifications as will vender it in the highest 
degree useful. The spirit of these remarks is em- 
braced in thai admirable extract, already quoted, 
from the Declaration of Independence: 

" Whenever any form of government becomes destructive 
of these ends, [namely, 'life, liberty, and the pursuit of hap- 
piness,'] it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it, 
and to institute a new government, laying its foundations 
on such principles, and organizing its powers in such form, 
as to them shall seem mosl likelj to effect their safety and 
aess." 

This doctrine is true to reason and Scripture. It 

regards man not as the victim and slave of civil 
law, but as its proprietor and conservator, for the 



IMPROVEMENTS EST CIVIL GOVERNMENT. 83 

noblest objects of life. It regards government as 
made for man, and not man for government. The 
opposite view presents man as doomed to servitude, 
for the support of mere power. He is a drudge, on 
whose obsequiousness government officials may fat- 
ten, and who can only properly fulfill his obligations 
by submission in all things. That is, he is a being 
made to be governed, and made for nothing else. 
Hence, it is of no consequence whether he is well 
or ill governed, since government of any kind is 
presumed to meet all the demands of his nature. 

Despots have assiduously inculcated this abomi- 
nable error, because they well understood that truth 
would destroy their pretensions and annihilate their 
power. Every attempt has been made to surround 
the subject of government reform with superstitious 
fears, as though it were something too high or too 
sacred for the people to manage. Submission to the 
powers that be, without any exception, is the bur- 
den of political teaching. The people are made to 
believe that it is dangerous for them to meditate 
improvements and alterations in matters so vastly 
important, and so much above them ! Just as 
though it was not altogether the people's busi 
to attend to these things. Who shall look after the 
rights of the people — themselves, or those whom 
they have directed, as their servants, to discharge 
certain specified duties ? Is it the duty of the peo- 
ple to look after their own interests, or is it not ? 
Is it, in short, a crime in them to attend to their 



84 THE HIGHER LAW. 

own affairs ? Base is that sophistry, which would 
mislead the public on so vital a point. Statesmen, 
politicians, government officials, legislators, and all 
who live by the present order of things, in such a 
way as to dread salutary changes in civil polity, 
are conspirators against mankind. They delude the 
people, in order to destroy them. 

" Their interest, like a lion, lives on prey." 

From all such treasonable sentiments and designs, 
we cannot too earnestly pray to be delivered. The 
generations of men have too long groaned under the 
infamous deception practiced by civil despots. It 
is time the sp>ell was broken. Men should know 
that " resistance to tyrants is obedience to God." 
It is not meddling — at is not impertinence for the 
people to assume the correction of political evils. 
The work is theirs, and only theirs, because, under 
God, they are the only fountain of civil authority. 
To array against them their own institution, is mer- 
ciless barbarity : to make them destroy one another, 
for the ostensible purpose of promoting their wel- 
fare, is worse than savage cruelty. It has been said, 
that " the world is governed too much," and if the 
unprincipled usurpation to which we have just re- 
ferred, must be set down as government, we shall 
have no difficulty in admitting the saying to be true. 
Of good government, there cannot be too much; 
like health, it can never accumulate to excess. But 
of miserable perversions, under the name of gov- 
ernment, the world has had enough ; and it is the 



IMPROVEMENTS IN CIVIL GOVERNMENT. 85 

unquestionable duty of all good men to use their 
best exertions to put down tyranny, wherever it 
may exist, either in church or state. This is the 
effect, and that directly, as well as indirectly, of the 
Gospel. The preaching of the pure word of God, 
is necessarily subversive of every form of human 
wickedness. This word binds men to the higher 
law, whatever may be the consequences, and who- 
ever may command to the contrary. Patriotism 
does the same. It is quite as patriotic to break 
laws as to keep them, provided they are not what 
they should be. We may go even further, and af- 
firm that patriotism absolutely demands resistance 
to 1 >ad laws. Such is the view taken of this impor- 
tant question, by Dr. Paley — an author who never 
leans to the side of ultraism: 

"It may be as much a duty, at one time, to resist gov- 
ernment, as it is, at another, to obey it: to wit, whenever 
more advantage will, in our opinion, accrue from resistance, 
than mischief." — Philos.: book 6, ch. 3. 

^Y(i have little disposition to enter upon refine- 
ments, on a subject of this magnitude, and hence, 
shall not waste time in discussing the difference be- 
tween passive and active disobedience to law. It 
has been contended, that passive obedience is al- 
lowable, where active is not. But this is a distinc- 
tion of no consequence, either practically or morally, 
for lie who refuses to obey, is just as liable to pun- 
ishment, as he who seeks to overturn the authority 
which imposed the unrighteous requirement. 



86 the higher law. 



CHAPTER VIII 
SLAVERY. 



An application of the foregoing principles to 
slavery, necessarily involves an inquiry into the 
nature and effects of that institution. Is slavery 
accordant with the Higher Law, or is it not \ This 
is the question, and the only question to be settled. 
If revelation and nature favor the institution, all 
attempts to put it down are wicked and must he 
abortive. The laws which sustain slavery, are 
either conformable to the higher law, or they are 
not : if the former is true, they should be cherished ; 
if the latter, they should be abolished. As we 
most confidently believe the latter, and not the for- 
mer, to be the fact in the case, we shall proceed to 
examine the character of slavery in three aspects — 
natural, political, and religious. In all these res- 
pects, it stands forth as the rankest dstjustice. ~i 



SLAVERY. 87 



SECTION I. 

NATURAL INJUSTICE OF SLAVERY. 

The slave is a man, and, therefore, lias the rights 
of a man. While he retains his humanity, he 
must retain all the rights belonging to humanity. 
At all events, these rights inhere in his nature, and 
are as inalienable as are the rights of any other 
human being. "Whence, then, this abnegation of 
right — this total destruction of every privilege 
guarantied by the charter of existence.'' Plainly, 
from that depravity, which, ever since the Fall, has 
waged Avar againsl God, and against his creatures. 
But to ascertain the cause of this injustice, and to 
gauge its extent, are things very different ; we may 
know that wrong has been done, and yet remain 
comparatively unmoved, because we are ignorant 
of the extent of the wrong. It is thus that slavery 
has too frequently passed without censure, as a ve- 
nial fault ; or provoked only a slight displacency, 
when it ought to have filled the soul with righteous 
indignation. Barely to affirm that the slave is di- 
vested of his natural rights, is not enough. "We 
must enumerate those rights, and study their im- 
portance to the man himself, to the world in which 
he lives, and to the God who made him, or we can- 
not feel all the abhorrence towards the system of 
slavery, which its extreme wickedness deserves. 



v 



88 THE HIGHEE LAW. 

It is nevertheless true, that no possible cure, or skill, 
on our part, can fully exhibit the injustice of this 
horrible institution. God alone can measure all 
the depths of its depravity. The following partic- 
ulars embrace as full a statement as our limits will 
permit. 

1. 8!<tr, /'I/ takes away 1li- right to life. This 
first natural right of man, is not always openly re- 
pealed on the statute-books of slave-holding states 
and nations, but it is virtually repealed. The slave 
has no equal chance for self-defence. His master 
goes armed, but he is unarmed. And in case of 
resistance, the law always gives the master the right 
to kill his slave at once. If charged with crime, 
the law, not recognizing him as a man, withholds 
from him the protection which it affords to other 
criminals. We do not say that the slave may be 
hilled wantonly, for such atrocity is not allowed, 
even towards brutes, but we affirm that his life is 
scarcely more secure than that of a brute. When- 
ever the master wishes to kill him, he can easily 
find what, in the eye of the law, will be a justifia- 
ble pretext. 

2. It takes away all 'personal liberty. Beyond 
the exercise of those animal functions, indispensa- 
ble to existence, the slave has neither liberty, nor 
the hope of liberty. Even those physical powers 
most necessary to bis existence, are subjected to 
severe restrictions. He may not see, or hear, or 
speak, or eat, except as the master prescribes. Such 



SLAVEKY. 89 

food and clotliiiig as are given him, he may use, 
and no other; such words as his owner chooses, he 
may hear, and no other. The right to go where and 
when he will, and the right to do, or not to do, are 
not his. He must obey another in all things, or 
Buffer whatever penalty his master chooses to in- 
flict — it may be starving, scourging, maiming, sell- 
ing, imprisonment, or death — for the law leaves 
him, as it docs any other property, almost entirely 
at the owner's disposal. 

3. It dU stroys all self-ownership. Every man 
has a natural right to himself — his own body 
and mind, with their various faculties and powers. 
Xothing of this kind can belong to the slave, be- 
cause the law which makes him a slave strips him 
of the last vestige of self-control. His mind and 
body, with all their capabilities, are the property of 
another. He can own nothing, for the simple rea- 
son that he is nothing — a mere nullity in law, and 
as incapable of ownership as a horse or a tree. 
What protection the law gives to his life, is given, 
not because he has any rights, but merely to pre- 
serve him as property. The law does not allow of 
a wanton destruction of property, and hence some 
little regard is paid to the treatment of human, as 
well as other animals. Were there no other out- 
rage on the rights of the slave, this alone is suffi- 
cient to strike him from the list of men. Without 
the right of possession, he mast drift along the 
stream of life, blighted and paralyzed beyond re- 



00 THE HIGHER LAW. 

lief. The slave cannot be a man — the law will not 
allow it. The law, having made him a chattel per- 
sonal, disdains to know him in any other capacity. 
And if he has more sensibility or power than a 
brute, it is only because he could not be dispossess- 
ed of these without destroying his life, and there- 
fore his value as a chattel. Tlic law has done its 
worst — it has taken all that could lie taken, and is 
only restrained by the utter impossibility of inflict- 
ing farther injury. 

4. It fakes away conscience. In subjecting the 
slave to the will of hi-; master, conscience is entire- 
ly st i aside. No man canhave a conscience unless 
he has either the power of choice, as to what he 
shall do, or an assurance that whatever is required 
is infallibly correct. No slave can do right, except 
upon the mere contingency, that his owner will al- 
low him to do so. That many who own slaves 
would consent to a course of rectitude, is not more 
certain than that there are many others who would 
not. Hence virtue is not provided for, and ought 
not to be expected to exist, in a slave population. 
It is not contemplated by the law, and too often not 
tolerated by the owner. 

5. It destroys the marriagi relation. So far as 
we have any knowledge, slaves are incapable of 
contracting marriage. They are, in thisrespi ct, < \ 
actly on a level with brutes. Indeed, it is not pos- 
sible thai marriage should exist, for marriage is a 
legal relation, ami implies contracting power ; but 



SLAVERY. 91 

the slave can make no contract. He is unknown in 
law. exeept as belonging exclusively and entirely 
to another. lie may live as it' married, but it would 
be a desecration of law to repeat its forms over 
those who have not power to keep the slightest of 
its requirements. The slave, if he could be married, 
could not protect his wife from insult and defile- 
ment, for she would not belong to him, but to his 
owner — all that the slave has, being his master's. 
Moreover, she might be sold or separated from him 
at any moment. 

6 . It < h sti '< yys th e parcn talrelat Ion. Th is follows 
inevitably from the foregoing. When marriage is 
not allowed to exist, the duty of parents to instruct 
and provide for their children must cease. Amid 
universal concubinage, parentage can scarcely be 
traced beyond the mother, and if it could, both 
mother and father are equally unable to provide 
for their children or themselves. But the chief dif- 
ficulty is the want of authority. The slave is di- . 
vested of all right to govern his children; they 
must obey their master, and not their parents. 
Again, the relation is destroyed, because the chil- 
dren of slaves may at any time be separated from 
their parents forever. Without means to support 
his children, without the right to govern them, or 
even to retain them within his knowledge, the slave 
has no power to discharge the duties of a parent. 

7. li takes away //>< right of seffidrnprovemmt. 
One of the most valuable of man's natural rights, 



92 THE HIGHEE LAW. 

is that of developing his own powers. His physi- 
cal, mental, and moral faculties require cultivation; 
but all education is denied him. Not only are no 
institutions of learning provided for his use, but the 
laws of every slave state make it a high misde- 
meanor to teach a slave to read. The slave is kept 
in brutal ignorance, that he may be kept a slave. 
His owner knows that knowledge and slavery arc- 
incompatible. All the cultivation allowed to his 
physical and moral powers, is of that questionable 
kind, which will fit him the better for a state of 
servitude. He may be taught submission and 
fidelity to his master, and so much of manual dex- 
terity as will enable him to work in the field, like 
the horse or the ox. Other cultivation he cannot 
have, unless by stealth, and at the peril of greater 
hardships. 

8. It destroys the gwrswt of hwppiness. By 
cutting off all the rights which belong to man as 
man, it cuts off all the motives that prompt human 
nature to better its condition. The slave may toil, 
but the rewards of his toil are tin- another. He 
can neither have any tiling, nor lie any thing, but a 
chattel. His earnings are not at his disposal, so 
thai if prompted by the most devoted affection to 
labor, he must labor in vain. Virtue and cul- 
tivation bring him nothing, except a keener sense 
of torment. His state of vassalage precludes all 
hope, lie can never rise to manhood. And his 
posterity after him, to the latest hour of time, 



SLAVERY. 93 

shall lie just as low, and just as hopeless, as him- 
self. For the slave there is nothing but brutal 
drudgery up to the day of death, and there would 
be nothing beyond, if human legislation could reach 
the " better land." 



SECTION II 

POLITICAL INJUSTICE OF SLAVERY. 

Slavery is the creature of law. It originates in 
the law, and depends upon it for its existence. Kot 
that the law is more than a proximate cause, for the 
law itself must have a cause, and that cause, how- 
ever remote, is the real basis of slavery, and of all 
slavery laws. This primary source of the evil, is, 
as we have already stated, the corruption of man's 
nature, which renders him not only unjust towards 
God, but also towards the creatures of God. But 
Ave have now to do only with the practical embodi- 
ment of this depravity, in the shape of political 
regulations. It is quite obvious, that men are nat- 
urally on a level, in relation to essential rights. 
Among the truths held to be self-evident, by the 
ever memorable signers of the Declaration of Inde- 
pendence — a class of men and a document, to which 
we cannot too often refer — this was first, and in 
these words, "all men are created equal." This 
was but re-affirming a great truth, which these pa- 
5* 



0-i THE HIGHER LAW. 

triots deemed too obvious for argumentation — it 
was simply throwing into words, one of the first 
dictates of common sense and common justice. It 
Mas no fortunate discovery or recondite speculation 
of theirs; they did no more than appeal to it as a 
truth, pre-established and indisputably evident to 
all men. Taldng this, then, as our starting point, 
we must claim for the slave an equal chance in the 
advantages of civil government. If the institution 
is beneficial to others, it certainly musl be benefi- 
cial to him, unless through his own fault, or that of 
others. But what is the actual result \ This, and 
only this: slavery, at one fell swoop, strips its sub- 
jects of every political right, it is not a bare cur- 
tailment of civil immunities, bat the entire loss of 
all — as if humanity itself were swept away. The 
slave becomes a chattel, and ceases to be a man. 
Still further, to illustrate this tact. 1 shall specif) 
some of the more prominent features of the slave 
code. 

1. The slavi has n<> part in making lli<- laws. 
To all others, except under the most absolute mon- 
archies, where laws can hardly lie said to exist, 
some chance is afforded of determining what the 
law shall be. If all do qoI Bit in legislative assem- 
blies, <»]• even have the right of suffrage, they arc 
nevertheless, represented, because the laws are made 
formen; and their humanity is represented in the 
humanity of those who do make the laws. Legis- 
lator.- legislate for ihemselve , as well as for others, 



SLAVERY. 95 

and they make such laws for other freemen or citi- 
zens, as they themselves expect to keep. But the 
citizenship of the slave is denied. He comes not 
into the category of men ; he is not regarded as hu- 
man. The laws which bear upon him, bear upon 
no one else ; they are slave laws — made to degrade 
men, and keep them degraded. And so far as the 
slave is concerned, none of the ordinary ends of 
government are had in view, in these enactments. 
His protection and improvement, his welfare and 
happiness, are wholly out of the question. The 
legislation concerns the master, not the slave. 

2. The slave has no part in administering the 
laws. Of course, this is only in keeping with the 
preceding. It might, however, be some alleviation, 
if such inhuman laws could be impartially admin- 
istered. But severe and ruinous as is the law, its 
actual administration is, after all, more shocking. 
Caprice, ignorance, lust, avarice, pride, madness, 
tyranny, all by turns or at once, stimulate to abuse, 
and where the law itself is so exceeding brutal, it 
must, of necessity, under the influence of these de- 
praved passions, become a convenient instrument of 
unmeasured wrongs. The slave has no redress. 
Submission or death are the only alternatives. It 
is conceded, that all slave-holders may not be thus 
severe, but the ground of complaint is, that all may 
be what the worst indisputably are. There can be 
no security, bo long as the law eats oil' the slave 
from all participation in guarding his own rights. 



96 THE HIGHER LAW. 

3. The slave is treated as a culprit^ and that with- 
out any alleged guilt. One would naturally suppose 
that a criminal would at least have some of the 
usual forms of justice applied to him. But we see 
nothing in his case, except the most perfect disin- 
heritance. As if predestinated to utter ruin — as if 
all the possibilities of manhood had been forfeited 
forever — 'he is unscrupulously allotted to servitude, 
with only such legislative oversight as will keep 
him in implicit subjection to his owner. There is 
no imputation of personal guilt, and the infliction 
can have respect to nothing but ancestral or imag- 
inary demerit. Neither of these, however, is al- 
leged, and the worse than felon's condition, imposed 
upon the African, must be acknowledged to be 
without any assignable cause. He is a slave, and, 
therefore, must be a slave — this is the only reason 
given for the contumely and outrage heaped upon 
his nature. Whether this is a sufficient reason, I 
shall not now inquire. 

4. The slave law takes away all prop< rty, and all 
the rights of property. ~No slave can sue i >r be sued, 
because he cannot be the owner of any thing — not 
even of himself. This is the most perfect alienation 
possible. It reduces the individual to a nonentity. 
How disastrous such a state must be, will readily 
be perceived, when we reflect that by far the 
larger part of human laws relate, either directly or 
indirectly, to property interests. It diminishes the 
slave code to the merest fragment, making it con- 



SLAVERY. 97 

sist of a few precepts and penalties — but chiefly the 
latter' — for the regulation of personal conduct. All 
the great interests of humanity perish at once, under 
this heartless system, and the slave becomes as iso- 
lated from the rest of the human race, as if God 
had made him only what his owner makes him — a 
brute. Such a living death is the inevitable lot of 
all, to whom the law is nothing but a record of pen- 
alties. It is the object of government to conserve 
all the rights of man ; in this case, however, it does 
exactly the reverse, and destroys them all. But 
there is here no inconsistency with the avowed prin- 
ciple of the slave code, for it everywhere assumes 
that the slave is not a man. 

5. The next particular, is a total restriction of 
personal liberty. No more is allowed the slave, in 
this respect, than is allowed the cattle of the field. 
He may go where his owner permits, but no where 
else. But the condition of the slave falls much be- 
low that of the brute; since the latter may stray 
with impunity, while the former is liable to the se- 
verest punishment, for such an offence. Both are 
considered as personal property, and neither may 
leave his owner without permission. Such a law 
cuts off all emigration, and nearly all business of a 
commercial nature, except in the slave states. It 
renders those changes and removals, which are 
prompted by industry and enterprise, an utter im- 
possibility. And if there were no other unjust laws 
bearing upon the slave, this alone would ensure his 



98 THE HIGHER LAW. 

rain. Give him all the other rights of manhood, 
but take away personal freedom, and all his ener- 
gies will remain dormant. 

G. The slave is subjected to disprqportioned jptm- 
ishments. The penal code of slavery is not only 
made and administered, irrespective of the right 
which every man has to regulate the civil institute 
under which he lives, but it bears the stamp of in- 
tentional cruelty. Degradation is its object. The 
slave is to be made to feel that he is not human, 
and, therefore his faults are punished with a severity 
unknown to human jurisprudence. In the first 
place, the law imposes upon him a great many re- 
strictions, such as could be imposed only by the 
most intolerable tyranny, and then seeks to enforce 
the observance of these restrictions by bloody pen- 
alties. These shocking, demoniacal barbarities, are 
worthy of that supreme wickedness, for the support 
of which they are employed. 

7. The laws afford him tw protection. It has 
been shown, in the previous section, that even life 
is not guarded by the slave law. All other rights 
are swept away a1 once, by converting him into a 
chattel, and if life were not essential to the value oi 
the chattel, t here is every reason to believe the >Ia\ e 
would be killed with as little ceremony as any other 
animal. As the law mow stands, lie is exposed to 
tin- fury of the most diabolical passions, am! may 
be mutilated or slaughtered, whenever his master 
choo e . pn vided some decent excuse can be in- 



SLAVERY. 99 

vented, to cover the deed of infamy. All other in- 
dignities follow, of course. Where life is not pro- 
tected, it is in vain to look for the protection of 
other rights. Thus, the very object for which law 
exists among men, is wholly lost sight of, and the 
slave is as completely shut out from every ad- 
vantage of this kind, as if he had not been created 
a member of the human family. 

8. The laws afford him no assistance whatever. 
Enstead of the kindly aid, which government was 
designed to give to every human being, the slave 
experiences nothing but systematic spoliation. Gov- 
ernment, though a blessing to others, is to him the 
severest curse. lie reaps none of the good Avhich 
it might do, but suffers all the evils which its ut- 
most perversion can inflict. An institution that 
others regard as the charter of rights, is, to him, 
only a record of perpetual disinheritance. Xot one 
of all the numerous advantages of association can 
he know, inasmuch as the law has cast him beyond 
its pale, and heeds him only as a being made to be 
led. 



SECTION III. 

Kl LIGIOUS IN.M STH E OF SLAV! !>"i . 

Slavery and Christianity arc eternal opposites, as 
separate from each other as vice is from virtue, or 
heaven from hell. This is a truth, almost too well 



100 THE HIGHER LAW. 

known to need illustration, but we will briefly state 
the facts on which the declaration is made, and 
which forever place slavery in the category of 
crimes. 

1. It is opposed to the law of love. Christianity 
teaches us to love God with all the heart, and our 
neighbor as ourselves. Neither can be d< >ne 1 >y him 
who rubs a fellow being of liberty, and of every 
other essential right. It is no worse to rob a man 
of money, than it is to rob him of that which is 
equivalent to money. The crime of robbing does 
not consist in taking money or goods simply, but in 
taking that which is valuable ; it is forcibly inva- 
ding another's rights. Now, if liberty is of any 
value to the colored man, the law of love will not 
allow him to be dispossessed of it, unless for rea- 
sons of a punitive nature, and no one pretends that 
slavery is designed as a punishment. Love requires 
that we should be quite as willing to become a slave, 
as to impose that condition on another. It avail- 
nothing to say, that others have imposed the con- 
dition, and that we have only acquiesced in what 
was already dour; for we may as well kill the 
prophets as build their tombs, if, by our conduct, we 
sanction their murder. To keep stolen property, 
when it is known to have been stolen, and when it 
is in our power to return it to the owner, is the 
basest injustice — is theft. Men are brethren, and 
one great object of the gospel is, to restore fraternal 
feeling to the human hearl ; but this cannot be done 



SLAVERY. 101 

without annihilating slavery, which is at war with 
all fraternal feelings. 

2. It is opposed to the lam of i/rrvprovemervt. 
Christianity improves all who come under its influ- 
ence; it is an elevating power, which never fails to 
raise both the head and the heart to higher excel- 
lence. But slavery crushes the whole man, and 
keeps him forever crushed — a thing of naught, nei- 
ther man nor brute. Such a being cannot be a 
Christian, nor can Christianity produce such a for- 
lorn thing — a being so blighted, wrecked, hopeless. 
It may seem a bold proposition, but we affirm, that 
whether we contemplate the master or the slave, 
Christianity is impossible to the relation. Could the 
slave remain as ignorant and powerless as he was 
before his conversion, then he might still be a slave, 
but by virtue of his translation into the kingdom of 
Christ, he is made free : 1. From every law of 
man which conflicts with his obligation to God. 2. 
From that imbecility peculiar to ignorance. 3. 
From irresponsibility, or that absence of all charac- 
ter, which makes the mere chattel. The slave, as 
a heathen, has no rights, no conscience, no wife, no 
children. But Christianity strips him quickly of 
this irresponsibility, and restores his manhood, by 
giving him duties to perform, with which no other 
man may interfere. The converted slave is, there- 
fore, by the very fact of his conversion, bronghl 
under an authority which destroys all human owner- 
ship in him, and all improper control over him. The 



102 the higher law. 

master is restrained in like manner. lie may not 
keep a slave, because he cannot keep, innocently, a 
human being degraded; he is bound to labor for 
the intellectual, mural, and physical improvement 
of all mankind. Show us any. class of men, towards 
whom the Christian may even be indifferent, and 
then we will admit that religion does not necessarily 
destroy the relation of slave and master. 

3. It is opposed to the la/vo of purity. Holiness, or 
moral purity, is one of the most essential principles of 
the gospel, but slaverv is a violation of right, and 
therefore, cannot be consistent with a system that for- 
bids all wrung — -all unholiness. Few men have ever 
been so fool-hardy, as to attempt to prove that slave- 
ry is right, p< /■ si . Such an attempt could only sin >w 
that the man who made it, had no proper ideas of 
right and wrong — that, in his mind, vice and vir- 
ture were all the same, or were distinguished from 
each other by something which had no relation to 
human happiness. Is it right to hold a man as a 
slave? Certainly not. The common sense, the 
feeling-, and the judgment of men. are as much 
united in denying the justice of slavery, as they are 
in denying that of murder. Now, as a holy reli- 
gion cannot sanction an unholy practice, it follows, 
invariably, that wherever the gospel prevails, sla- 
very must cease. All Christians, and all Christian 
ministers, will behold it with abhorrence, and en- 
quire, "What shall he done for the extirpation of 
the evil of slavery '." 



SLAVERY. 103 

4. It is opposed to the law of equality. The gos- 
pel is a system of spiritual agrarianism. It puts 
the prince and the peasant on a level, giving to 
each in proportion to his faith, and only in propor- 
tion to his faith. In the church there is neither 
high nor low, neither great nor small. Slavery dis- 
turbs this equality, and instead of putting all on a 
level, where the Grod of nature and of grace puts 
them, it gives to one man all power, and to the 
ciher none. This is unchristian, because it is un- 
kind. It is not doing to the colored man, as the 
white man wishes should be done to himself. It is 
unbrotherly, cruel, unjust. And in fact, the whole 
question of emancipation, whether immediate or 
gradual, is -imply a question of justice. Shivery is 
injustice — unprovoked, inexcusable, and immeasur- 
able injustice. The colored man has just the same 
right — if right there can be — do subject the white 
man to bondage, to hold him, with his wife and 
his children, as chattels, subject to separation and 
to sale. The white man need not be shocked at 
this, for when we come to the abstract justice of 
slavery, the color of the skin makes no difference. 
Eternal justice demands that the slave go free. 
J I is bondage is a fraud on creation. Those who 
hold him, and those who consent to his being held 
as a slave, are the guilty perpetrators of this fraud. 
It is not for us to say how far they rm am to he fraud- 
ulent, and to pervert the justice of the All-creating 
Hand which dispenses the gift of freedom to each 



104: THE HIQHEE LAW. 

alike ; we are witnesses to the fact only, and have 
no power to determine the exact turpitude of the 
motives which influence the oppressor. His proud 
wrath may be less criminal than we had supposed, 
hut the natural history of slavery reveals itself 
everywhere as a violence done to nature. Hence, 
though for political reasons we might wish to avoid 
extremes, yet moral rectitude allows of no compro- 
mise. There is no middle ground. "Wemusl either 
let the oppressed go free, or ourselves be worse than 
slaves — -unjust. Had men no consciences, they 
might innocently be slave-holders, but as the case 
now stands, the white man must become a knave it' 
the colored man becomes a slave. The struggle, 
therefore, is to avoid guilk The North may he 
moved partly by sympathy, but by far the sternest 
motive known to anti-slavery men is, a sense of that 
equal justice which is ever due from man to man. 
5. It is apposed to th law of truth. Efceligionis 
true; it is founded in truth, and inculcates only 
truth. But slavery is false, fundamentally false, 
and leads all astray who have any thing to do with 
it. The master, the slave, civilization, and religion, 
are alike ruined by its influence. Christianity 
never leaves a man with so little Light, as to make 
him the victim of such an error. He who thinks 
to prosper by oppression, mistakes the economy of 
IVm, ide] ■ The poor and the ignorant are to be 
raised up, and made equal with other men; this is 
the way to prosperity, as indicated by the go 



SLAVEET. 105 

and it is n'O wonder that the slave states, acting for 
generations in open disregard of so important a 
truth, should steadily decline, while all around 
them is flourishing in the highest degree. It is hut 
the blight and curse which always follow sin. 

C). It is qpposi d to the law of God as God. ISTot, 
indeed, if we concede that slavery is in accordance 
with the Divine law, for then the master becomes 
as God — his tyranny is but an expression of the 
Divine will. And this sort of justification, it is 
well known, is a prime object with all slavery prop- 
agandists. They affect to be executing the predeter- 
mined purpose of Heaven ; and when this subterfuge 
will not answer, they claim that God has delegated 
all power to civil government, and that the decrees 
of such government cannot be resisted without 
sin. This hypothesis, it is true, does not affect 
slavery alone: it crushes at once all religious free- 
dom, and makes men obey the state, whether it Lids 
them do right or wrong. "When there is a plain 
conflict between the Divine and human, the latter^ v* 
must always have precedence. It is clear, therefore, 
that the kingdom of God cannot be established in 
connection with such pretensions, unless it takes the 
form of politics, and identifies itself always with 
the dominant party. But such fatalism, or panthe- 
ism, is the merest evasion of all argument, and in 
practice amounts to downright atheism. The sub- 
stance is this: slavery must be sanctioned at all 
events, and neither God nor man may teach or prac- 



100 THE HIGHER LAW. 

tice to the contrary. We therefore conclude, that 
the law of God cannot be known among slave-hold- 
ers as the law of God, because in this character it 
might have inconvenient claims — it would be su- 
perior to any law they could make, and this supe- 
riority would reduce their slavery code to a nullity. 

These general considerations are amply sufficient 
to show»thatthe spirit of Christianity is subversive 
of slavery, and that there is no safety for the pecu- 
liar institution but in the absence of religion. 
Where the gospel is, slavery cannot be. They can 
never coalesce. It is, however, not the spirit alone 
of the gospel that is opposed to slavery; the letter 
is equally hostile to every thing of the kind. We 
admit that slavery is not specifically prohibited in 
the N"ew Testament. Neither arc murder, burgla- 
ry, counterfeiting, and various other high crimes. 
Shall we conclude that these are consistent with 
Christianity, because they are not particularly speci- 
fied among its prohibitions \ We are enjoined to do 
no evil, to be holy, arid to be kind, and these gene- 
ral precepts area literal prohibition of slavery, with 
all its kindred abominations. 

How far religion may exist in connection with 
the bare form of slavery, aside from its spirit, 1 do 
not pretend to determine. But as the slave law is 
unjust, Christianity must of neeesi il _. r< rider it a 
dead letter; the two cannot co-exist. It may be 
possible, thai in some rare instances the spirit of 
institution is so entirely dead, that though the form 



SLAVERY. 107 

remains, it is innocuous. Still, the presence of 
such an instrument of tyranny, is always good evi- 
dence that the spirit of tyranny is also present. 
The laws of a people are a true index to their dis- 
positions. Were only the dead letter of the law 
remaining, as is often alleged in favor of those who 
hold slaves, it would nevertheless be very dangerous 
to continue in such a relation. These dead laws 
would be a temptation to cruelty and injustice ; the 
evil spirit would come again to inhabit those souls 
from which it had been expelled, and to revive the 
laws which had become dead. Safety requires that 
the letter, as well as the spirit of the law, should be 
extirpated, for the one begets the other. But this 
is mainly a question of prudence, and I shall not 
detain the reader with a further discussion of it. 



10S THE HIGHER LAW. 



CHAPTER IX. 
THE EFFECTS OF SLAVERY 



Simile injustice, however enormous, is by no 
means expressive of all the evils that belong to slave- 
ry. To the deliberate crushing of a race, there must 
be added that long list of sad effects which so sure- 
ly follows, whenever the rights of humanity are 
trampled down. These evil consequences are in- 
separable from the system, and may be distinctly 
seen in every slave-holding community. They relate 
to the slave, the slave-holder, and the state. 



SECTION I. 

EFFECTS ON THE SLAVE. 

Tin: birds-eye view which we took of slavery, in 
the preceding chapter, though far from exhibiting 
all its colossal wickedness, was sufficient to demon- 
strate that the slave must sink to the deepest wretch- 
edness. His rights gone, and all the incentives to 
improvement taken away, his very humanity crush- 



EFFECTS OF SLAVERY. 109 

ed, and every hope of regaining it lost, it would be 
folly to expect any thing but the most perfect degra- 
dation. As he has no opportunities above a brute, 
he will, of course, become brutal. He can aspire 
to nothing higher than the gratification of his ani- 
mal appetites, because there is nothing higher with- 
in his reach — nothing else allowed him by the law, 
and not even this, except under severe restrictions. 
Slaves are proverbially inefficient laborers, but this 
is only a natural result of compelling them to work 
in the absence of proper motives. What they earn 
is not theirs ; and white men would be just as dila- 
tory and worthless, if obliged to toil under the same 
circumstances. They are also comparatively use- 
less, owing to the extreme ignorance in which they 
must be kept. The mechanic arts and the sciences 
cannot be taught them, without disqualifying them 
for servitude. In fact, the very knowledge which 
would fit them for any branch of business, would 
melt their chains. It is therefore necessary to keep 
them ignorant in order to keep them at all. Knowl- 
edge is power, and slaves are allowed no power, lest 
they should use it for their own good. Everywhere, 
then, this kind of population must exhibit the imbe- 
cility of ignorance. 

Poverty follows in the train of compulsory igno- 
rance. The slave has nothing. He is kept so 
degraded that but little could be his, if he were per- 
mitted to have what he earns. His ignorant drudg- 



110 THE HIGHER LAW. 

ery would only yield a scanty support at best ; yet 
even this is not afforded him, and he is forced to 
subsist, not as a num. but as an animal. And he 
is clothed and housed as he is fed; that is, in the 
coarsest manner, and on such a scanty allowance as 
may be convenient, after the owner's cupidity and 
luxury have been provided for, out of this unpaid 
and unproductive labor. 

The next effect of the system is its total perver- 
sion of the nobler instincts of the sold. It strikes 
out of man's nature all that is human, and leaves a 
wreck. It dwarfs into a brute, a being which God 
intended for a man. This is the sin of slavery. 
This is its grand effect. The beings thus despoiled 
are not dead, but ruined ; their physical nature is 
not dead, but their humanity is. Neither the cares, 
nor the aspirations, nor the hopes, nor the duties, 
nor the motives, which ought to actuate man, are 
ever known to these degraded beings. The benefi- 
cence and wisdom of the Creator are set at naught. 
He might as well have made the African incapable 
of the functions of humanity, since the slave-holder 
decides that these functions shall never be exercised. 
So much is done in the first generation towards de- 
humanizing the slave; and if the effects of the os- 
tein are so disastrous on the first generation, what 
must they be when accumulated in his nature by 
means of hereditary transmission \ It is precisely 
this superinduced weakness and meanness which 



EFFECTS OF SLAVERY. Ill 

give to slavery its permanence, and to the master 
his security. He has succeeded in growing a race 
of men — men only in form — fitted for servility. 

As the slave cannot be trusted with knowledge, 
so neither can he be trusted with any of the results 
of knowledge. Machinery, now of such transcend- 
ent importance to all civilized countries, is a thing 
next to impossible where slavery exists. To work 
machinery requires intelligence ; but the utmost 
pains are taken — even to the enactment of severe 
prohibitory laws — to keep the slave in ignorance. 
He is therefore doomed to incapability, and must 
forego all the advantages which mechanical inven- 
tion has conferred upon the world. That is, he must 
be a savage; for it amounts to this, since there is 
little difference between civilized and uncivilized, 
except in the state of the arts and sciences. 



SECTION II. 

EFFECTS ON TUE SLAVE-HOLDER. 

By a law of Providence, the injurer as well as the 
injured, suffers. The doer of wrong cannot escape 
the effects of his own conduct. That law which 
forces the slave to lose caste among human be- 
ings, is scarcely less ruinous to his master. The 
industry, that should have promoted health and vir- 



112 THE IIIGIIER LAW. 

tue, is dispensed with, and all the deplorable conse- 
quences of idleness follow. Labor is deemed fit 
only for slaves, and hence the master, together with 
his children, falls into habits of sloth and effeminacy, 
as discreditable as they are pernicious. Such hab- 
its are not only evil in themselves, and in their 
effects upon the slave-owner, but they subtract from 
the common store, by just so much as the well-di- 
rected industry of those who are idle would have 
earned. And this is another source of the poverty 
common to all slave-holding states. Wealth is the 
fruit of toil. But where only a part, say one-half, 
labor, and these under the greatest disadvantage, 
because of the profound ignorance in which they 
must be kept, extreme poverty is an unavoidable 
consequence. In estimating the wealth of slave- 
holding communities, we are liable to miscalculate, 
inasmuch as the entire body of slaves have nothing, 
and are expected to have nothing. If the few slave- 
owners are not degradingly poor, it is because they 
are the only property-holders. It will be found, 
moreover, that their wealth is often wholly fictitious, 
consisting of what, in other states, is never called 
property — namely, the bodies and souls of men. 
This is not wealth, and would not be regarded as 
such, in a free country : yet it makes by far the 
larger part of all the riches of a slave-holding peo- 
ple. How degraded and impoverished must be 
that community, which has to inventory the bones 
and sinews of one half of its number as property, 



EFFECTS OF SLAVERY. 113 

in order that the other half may be said to have 
wealth ! The expedient fails, however, and with 
all their sacrilegious counting of men as property, 
the slave states are, and must be, wretchedly jx>or. 
Their poverty, notwithstanding it is extreme, is 
only a minor evil. Released from the salutary 
toil wJiich enriches freemen, slave-holders sink into 
dissipation and debauchery. An idle people must 
ever be vicious as well as poor. But their vices 
flow chiefly from another source ; having broken 
down all law and all right, on the part of their 
slaves, this absence of restraint becomes a copious 
fountain of corruption. Indeed, the first act in this 
drama of crime draws after it all the rest. The 
slave is plundered in the outset of every thing per- 
taining to him as a man, and this commencement 
indicates the spirit which is to control his subse- 
quent history. One crime naturally follows another, 
and those who have left their victim defenceless, 
will be sure to yield to the temptation which such 
a state oilers to the commission of further crimes. 
Strike down the right of a man to protect himself 
from insult, and he is sure to be treated as a brute ; 
take from woman the right to defend her virtue, 
and she is equally sure to become polluted. Wheth- 
er this utter corruption was intended or not, by 
those win > first instituted slavery, is of little moment, 
Bince the fact of its existence cannot be questioned. 
That the most shocking cruelty, and the grossest 
licentiousness abound, wherever slavery is tolerated, 



114 THE ITIGHER LAW. 

is too apparent to need proof — is admitted even by 
slave-holders themselves. Nor is this corruption 
optional with either the slaves or their masters. 
The relation of the parties being unnatural and 
criminal in itself, leads inevitably to further wick- 
edness. The spirit which degraded the man or 
woman, is necessary to keep such man or woman 
degraded. The same crushing, robbing, polluting, 
heartless invasion of rights, must be kept up to the 
last. Under a better spirit, slavery would soon be- 
come extinct, and that, too, without legislative aid. 
Its enormities could not be perpetrated by pure 
minds. The system being the opposite of virtue, 
would be a flat impossibility among the virtuous. 
A good regime can never know such a monstrosity. 
The dreadful necessity, then, is imposed on every 
slave-holder, of personally and intentionally en- 
slaving man. lie cannot be a mere inheritor of 
slaves, but in order to hold them, must acquire the 
same dispositions which originally reduced them to 
bondage. This is not theory, but fact. The child 
of every slave mother is as really made a slave, by 
the owner of the mother, as if it had been pur- 
chased in Africa for the purpose of enslavement. 
And in this way slave-holders are not barely hold- 
ing the slaves which past generations had entailed 
upon them, but actually enslaving all the children 
who are born of slave parents. Hence, whatever 
guilt may be affirmed of the first slave-holder, may 
be affirmed of all his successors. No child is bom 



EFFECTS OF SLAVERY. 115 

a slave, or can be ; such a thing is unknown in na- 
ture. But as the children of slaves are all made 
slaves, it follows that slave-holders, notwithstanding 
their pretensions to chivalry, are guilty of preying 
upon helpless infancy, and robbing it of every 
right — even its very humanity. Infancy, which 
always finds protection among the good, is thus 
cruelly outraged by slave-holders. This dastardly, 
ignoble conduct has no parallel in human wicked- 
ness. Compared with it, ordinary robbery appears 
but a venial fault. It has none of the courage 
which marks the brigand. It has no redeeming 
qualities ; it is sheer depravity, deliberately blotting 
out all the traces of manhood, and cutting off all 
the possibilities of happiness. But I will not dwell 
on this reproachful aspect of the subject. 

Aside from the evils just enumerated, is another, 
less observed, but scarcely less pernicious. I allude 
to the wanton contempt for man, which this abomi- 
nable system renders necessary. Not only towards 
the slave is there unfeeling and unbrotherly treat- 
ment, but a habit of tyrannizing is formed, which 
displays itself in implacable resentment and mur- 
derous strife, whenever opportunity offers. The 
sanctity of man is destroyed. Hands, that have so 
often stripped human nature of its all, save life, 
and that without any provocation whatever, can 
hardly be expected to deal kindly and respectfully 
with more than a few personal and partisan friends. 
It is just this want of regard for man as man, that has 



116 THE HIGHER LAW. 

made all attempts to abolish slavery so difficult. A 
peculiar recklessness of life and character, a fierce 
and almost insane devotion to existing usages, irre- 
spective of right or wrong, have rendered every 
effort at improvement, both dangerous and imprac- 
ticable. "We cannot account for this, except on the 
ground of moral deterioration. Slave-holders seem 
to have no interest in human progress — certainly 
none, but directly the reverse, in reference to their 
slaves ; and the necessity which they are under to 
maintain this hostility to the improvement of some, 
naturally makes them indifferent, if not hostile, to 
the improvement of all. This inertia, or misan- 
thropy of character, is the clue to the utter despair 
t which prevails in all slave-holding states, touching 
the success of emancipation. The public mind, in 
such communities, is so unused to enterprize, that 
it halts, with childish dread, at difficulties which 
would only provoke a more determined trial among 
the pure and the vigorous. As purity is power, and 
impurity is weakness, none have a vigorous moral 
purpose, but those in whom conscience has its full 
sway. Hence, there is moral atrophy wherever 
there is slavery. 

Again, slavery does not afford opportunity for 
cultivating the higher virtues. It is necessary to 
refrain from great plans of improvement, lest the 
slave interest be subverted thereby. No schemes 
of amelioration, no means of elevation, are wanted, 
in such a community. It would jeopard the " pe- 



EFFECTS OF SLAVERY. 117 

culiar institution," to cherish such designs in its 

presence. We accordingly find either an utter 
stag-nation of thought in such communities, on 
all the subjects of practical benevolence, or, what 
is much the same, these thoughts are confined to the 
relief of those in remote countries — the heathen 
of other lands, instead of their own. 

I do not affirm that all who have to do with sla- 
very are equally affected by the system. Its dis- 
astrous consequences may be less fatal to some than 
to others ; but the tendency of the system is always 
the same, and all who come under its influence, 
must be depraved, more or less. So true is this, that 
it is doubtful which suiters most from slavery — the 
slave or his master. 



SECTION III. 

[TS EFFECTS oX Tin: STATE. 

As might be expected, every slave country has 
its uncontrollable evils. These defy all exact enu- 
meration, and all precise measurement ; but we may 
profit by a hasty glance at them. First, then, we 
notice the absence of cultivation. In order to til- 
lage and husbandry — such as belong to agricultural 
thrift — it is necessary that at least the heavier re- 
straints of industry be thrown oil'. The ignorance, 
6* 



118 THE HIGHER LAW. 

the want of motive, and the want of implements, 
which characterize slave labor, are insurmountable 
obstacles to the culture of the soil. Men, as chat- 
tels or animals, have sinews, and may perform va- 
rious operations on land, but they will never cultivate 
it with success. They lack the means for such a 
work. No country was ever thoroughly improved, 
and its resources developed, by such laborers. 
Something may be done, and is done, or slavery 
could not exist ; but the full capacity of the soil for 
production, is never elicited under such circumstan- 
ces. In the Southern states, large portions of the 
country, once fertile, have actually deteriorated, un- 
til they have become worthless, and their occupants 
have had to seek new plantations. Such an occur- 
rence was never known in a free country. But it 
is by no means uncommon, where slave-holding is 
practiced, or where, from extreme tyranny, all citi- 
zens are reduced to comparative vassalage. South 
America, Southern and Western Europe, Asia, Af- 
rica, and, in short, all countries having barbarous 
and tyrannical governments, furnish abundant proof 
of this. We look to them in vain for comfortable 
dwellings, beautiful fields, good roads, well sup- 
plied markets, for churches, schools, hospitals, and 
all the nameless productions of well directed in- 
dustry. 

Political insecurity is another, yet more striking 
feature, of slave-holding states. It is always unsafe 
to do wrong. And where one part of society is 



EFFECTS OF SLAVERY. 119 

smarting under the lash, and goaded to desperation 
by the loss of all its civil rights, we may well anti- 
cipate, that the other part will feel diminished con- 
fidence in their own political safety. Quiet is in- 
compatible with outrage. A consciousness of guilt — 
of the wrongs he has inflicted — makes the slave- 
holder more timid than other men. He fears the 
African, because he knows what reason there is for 
retaliation. " The wicked flee when no man pursu- 
eth ; but the righteous are bold as a lion." It is 
not the ordinary depravity of human nature that 
slave-holders have to dread ; they could guard 
against that, as other communities do. But they 
well know, that the usual safeguards of society are 
not enough for that superadded danger, which 
springs from oppression. This accounts for the fear 
of insurrection, so prevalent in all slave-holding 
states. People, wronged and degraded, are very 
likely to seek redress, and nothing but extreme igno- 
rance, on the part of those who are thus treated, can 
prevent their instant self-emancipation. They might 
not retaliate upon their former masters, but they 
could not fail to throw oft* the fetters of slavery. 

Every slave state is pervaded by this necessary 
inquietude and insecurity. And, as a consequence, 
we perceive everywhere a half military aspect. 
The police regulations, the customs and manners of 
society, and the tone of feeling, have a martial char- 
acter. The arbitraments of such a people are not 
those of the civil courts ; the lash, the pis.ol, and 



120 THE HIGHER LAW. 

the bowie knife, more commonly decide their quar- 
rels, aud mete out what they term justice. Such 
brutal, uncivilized practices, are inseparable from 
slave masters, in their intercourse with each other, 
because they are forced to maintain this kind of 
conduct towards their slaves. Slavery knows no 
law but the law of force — brute fi rce — -aud the 
master has, at all times, to evince hi ition 

and ability to compel tin slave to be a slav< . 
necessity, every where existin 
them exceedingly repulsi ernen. It is li 

spending one's life in a milil ip; it is ; 

civil liberty and peace were banished from the 
world. 

There is yet another evil connected with all slave- 
holding countries. I allude to their inability to repel 
foreign invasion. It is true, thai sou ition 

may be made to hostile forces, but the military 
strength of a slave state is greatly diminished, be- 
cause slaws are not only uo1 avai soldiers, 
but require, for their safe kee] . 
others, who, apart from the danger of a nrrection 
at home, might be employed as soldiers. Slave- 
holders must keep up a sort of standing army; the 
institution demands a continual guard, however un- 
able the country ma\ be I i afford it. 

Society may exist in such a country; there may 
be families and neighborhoods, hamlets, villi g< .-.and 
cities. These are not absolute impossibilities, and 
yet, from the very nature of the case, they mu t 



EFFECTS OF SLAVERY. 121 

exist under many embarrassments, and in a much 
less perfect condition, than characterizes them in 
free states. In the first place, a large part of the 
citizens are socially dead — non-existent. This wi- 
dens the distance between actual neighbors, and 
cuts off, in so far, all the advantages of association. 
In the city, a population of fifty thousand sinks to 
half that number — throwing upon these all the 
cares, and but half the advantages, common to a 
city twice as large. The same is true of villages, 
and rural districts. Schools, churches, and all 
things depending upon association, are poorly sup- 
ported, because the existence of caste renders so 
many unavailable for social enterprizes. As a fur- 
ther illustration of this extreme weakness of slave- 
holding communities, we may notice the singular 
provision of our Federal Constitution. Slaves are 
not men — no, not even human beings — but in or- 
der that the slave states might not be wholly out- 
numbered in the popular branch of Congress, it was 
necessary to allow every live slaves to count as 
much as three free white men. This gives the South 
an advantage, which would not be necessary, if 
slavery had not so weakened that part of the Union 
as to render it incapable of standing upon equal 
terms with the free states. According to the views 
maintained by slave-holders, they might just as well 
have made their cattle and horses the basis of Con- 
gressional representation. But the free states saw 
the weakness of the slave-holding states, and 



122 TOE HIGHER LAW. 

yielded, on the principle that the strong ought to 
bear the burdens of the weak. The same disordered 
and enfeebled condition is discoverable at every 
point, in the history and circumstances of a slave- 
holding people. 

I have thus briefly surveyed slavery, and its ef- 
fects. The reader will need no suggestion as to 
what inferences he shall draw from such premises. 
If civil government was instituted for beneficent 
purposes, it certainly must be horribly perverted, 
before it can occasion the enormous abuses which 
we have just contemplated. On the governed and 
the governors, these evils fall with equal certainty, 
and almost equal severity. The one are robbed by 
force, the other, by committing the robbery, are 
doomed to still greater loss. Of the two, the slave 
is less injured than his master. That such an insti- 
tution has any claims upon mankind, or that, for 
any cause, it ought to be exempted from the most 
rigorous opposition, is an idea too absurd to be en- 
tertained for a moment. An imaginary self-inter- 
est may blind the eyes of some, and the common 
hallucination, that slavery is a delicate and difficult 
affair to remove, may blind the eyes of others ; but 
the essential turpitude and folly of the thing will 
always stamp it as an intolerable evil. 



SLAVERY A CRIME. 123 



CHAPTER X. 
SLAVERY A CRIME 



It is utterly impossible that such a system should 
be recognized as a Divine institution. It tramples 
upon every law of God, and defeats every benevo- 
lent purpose of his providence. The very term 
slave, implies a crime. Such a relation, of one hu- 
man being to another human being, is itself evi- 
dence of guilt ; it implies the subversion of rights, 
which God has made inalienable, and which no one 
but himself may innocently revoke or annul. 

On this ground we rest. Here the anti-slave- 
ry cause finds its ample and eternal justification. 
Crime admits of no defence. The higher law not 
only allows, but compels every man to seek the 
destruction of vice. Does any one pretend to the 
contrary ? Is it not a conceded fact, that both 
human and Divine laws require the extirpation of 
all wrong, or rather, abstinence from all wrong? 
There is no denial of this, except by resorting to 
downright atheism. But some allege that slavery 
is not, upon the whole, an evil, much less a crime ; 
and this allegation is considered sufficient to silence 



124 THE HIGHER LAW. 

both the accusations of conscience, and the reproofs 
of an indignant Christian public. Who is ignorant 
of such sophistry \ Who has not witnessed it again 
and again, in every moral conflict? It is nothing 
more than a simple disturbance of established prin- 
ciples, in order to avoid the consequences which 
flow from them. It is a cheat of wicked men, 
to escape detection. The villain who keeps false 
weights, or false measures, acts on exactly the same 
plan. He appears to do right, only because the 
rule, by which right and wrung are determined, 
has been intentionally perverted — he gives full 
weight according to his seal ss, but not according to 
the scales of an honest man. Let the tyrant — the 
oppressor — the slave-holder — define justice, and 
slave-holding ceases to be unjust. It would be folly 
to dispute against the rectitude of slavery, if we 
acknowledged the authority of such ethics. 

Slavery stands forth as a crime only when tried 
by an incorruptible rule. The law of God, in reve- 
lation and in nature, fixes its character beyond the 
possibility of mistake. There either is no wrong, 
or slavery is wrong — all wrong — most criminally 
and palpably wrong. Make expedience, or selfish- 
ness, or lust, or power, the test of rectitude, and 
slavery is at once established as a righteous prac- 
tice ; but not slavery alone, for pride, extravagance, 
theft, dueling, and murder, are sanctioned by the 
same authority. When we depart from the word 
of God, and from that instinctive sense of right 



SLAVERY A CRIME. 125 

which characterizes man as a rational being, there 
is no longer any restraint upon conduct. Moral 
distinctions cease, and custom, irrespective of right 
or wrong, becomes the only acknowledged standard 
of duty. 

To such fearful lengths must they go, who either 
hold slaves or approve of slave-holding. It would 
be too much to avow respect for such an enormity. 
The evil must be disguised, or it cannot be endured. 
Even the most wicked, no less than novices in crime, 
demand something in the shape of justification — - 
they must have an opiate to soothe the pangs of 
remorse, and prevent the entire loss of self-respect. 
In its naked character of sin, slavery finds little or no 
countenance ; the shameless and abandoned atheist 
may possibly work himself up to such madness as 
would sanction it, per se, for he glories in his shame, 
and purposely reverses all natural sentiments of 
right. But to man, as he commonly meets us — to 
man, without any studied perversion of his judg- 
ment or instincts — to man, especially, enlightened 
by the word of God — slavery is unendurable, be- 
cause it is slavery. The word is odious ; it bespeaks 
outrage and wrong of no ordinary degree. There is 
an undefinable repugnance to every thing compre- 
hended in the term. It is like the word m/wder — 
a word which expresses only horrible and revolting 
ideas — a word which has no associations thai can 
please, or were ever designed to please. This word 



126 THE niGHER LAW. 

slavery has in it nothing that humanity can ap- 
prove — nothing against which it does not instantly 
revolt ; and there is, therefore, no way for one man 
to own another man as a slave. Manhood and sla- 
very can never coalesce. The two are opposites, 
eternal and irreconcilable. And it is only by means 
of deception that they are ever made to have the 
appearance of harmonizing. Men adopt false no- 
tions of right, and then acquit themselves of- all 
blame in robbing their fellow men of humanity. In 
this way deeds are done that would never be toler- 
ated, if the true principles of morals were suffered 
to be applied to them. No man was ever the apol- 
ogist of slavery, except as modified in the manner 
we have now suggested. 

Though slavery is a crime, and must involve all 
concerned in it in guilt, Ave do not affirm that the 
form of slavery must always be accompanied by the 
spirit. The shadow may be where the substance is 
not. A bad law among a good people becomes a 
dead letter. Thus Washington and Jefferson — the 
most distinguished of patriots — -were slave-holders 
only in name. Born amid slavery, and connected 
with it, not. voluntarily but involuntarily, they con- 
tracted no fellowship or respect for the system, and 
did what they could for its subversion. There are, 
undoubtedly, thousands now connected with sla- 
very who abhor the institution, and would gladly 
break away from its chains. Such are not to be 



SLAVERY A CRIME. 127 

classed with ordinary slave-holders, for with them 
slave-holding is merely a nominal thing, and if all 
were like them it would soon be abolished. 

While we make this concession cheerfully, in 
view of special cases, it by no means follows that 
such an apology is generally applicable. The most 
who hold slaves, hold them intentionally and from 
choice. They approve of the system, and would 
gladly perpetuate it forever. With these, as with 
other culprits, reason and reproof are too apt to be 
useless ; their heart is in the transgression, and to 
admonish them- is to "cast pearls before swine." 
At first they may have had no relish for slave-hold- 
ing, but as the practice of vice too commonly gen- 
erates the love of vice, they are found at last 
warmly attached to what an upright and uncontam- 
inated mind must always view with abhorrence. 
Slavery is contrary to the instincts of humanity — ■ 
it contravenes the common sense, the obvious equal- 
ity of natural rights, and the moral feelings which 
belong to the race. Nor can it ever be viewed as 
right, till the blindness induced by sin has dimned 
the sight and betrayed the judgment. 

Slavery, considered as a crime, is necessarily ab- 
horred. Human nature has never yet attained so 
desperate a stage of corruption as to hate unmixed 
good, or to love unmixed evil. AVe can call good 
evil, and hate it; or evil good, and love it; but we 
cannot hate the one and love the other, by itself 
alone. Hence, all approbation of slavery implies 



128 TIIE HIGHER LAW. 

deception; the individual has voluntarily brought 
upon himself this blindness, or it has been caused 
involuntarily by the circumstances in which he has 
been placed ; in either case, the immutability of 
constitutional principles is maintained, and virtue 
vindicated. It must be shown to be right to en- 
slave men, or men — so God has made them — must 
abominate slavery. 



APOLOGIES FOR SLAVERY. 129 



CHAPTER XL 
APOLOGIES FOR SLAVERY, 



As intimated in the foregoing chapter, slavery 
eannot stand alone — its essential wickedness makes 
it repulsive to all enlightened men. It is obvious 
that nothing but the unimportant circumstance of 
color, prevents the extension of the system to the 
utmost limit of power. And how long such a 
feeble barrier will be able to resist the encroach- 
ments of tyranny, must be very uncertain in any 
given case, since might, and not right, is the rule of 
progress. The possibility of a wider application of 
the slave-holding principle, is not simply a theoreti- 
cal idea ; it is already realized in Russia, in most 
Asiatic countries, and in Africa. The slavery of 
these countries has no relation to color, for the 
master and his slave are generally of the same 
complexion. In these nations, slavery itself consti- 
tutes a caste, without the trilling accident of color. 
This is also true of the slavery of the ancients. 
And if the disposition to enslave has, in other ages 
and nations, been exercised on those of kindred 



130 THE HIGHER LAW. 

blood, we have reason to apprehend that the same 
may occur in our own country at some future time. 
Thus the institution comes home to every man's 
personal feelings, and menaces him with a doom as 
wretched as that now inflicted on the black man. 
The white man is secured only by the color of his 
skin, and how long that will protect him he cannot 
tell. lie, therefore, sees himself in remote, if not 
in immediate danger, and the instinct of self-pres- 
ervation renders him an enemy of slavery. 

The honest fears, as well as moral repugnance, 
which cultivated men naturally entertain towards 
the system, have led its abettors to put forth a show 
of defence. But from first to last, not one argu- 
ment has transpired, that does not make tenfold 
more against the system than for it, I shall not 
trouble the reader with a specific and formal refu- 
tation of all the various sophistries that have been 
employed in defence of the institution : it is enough 
that we select one or two as a sample of the whole. 

Probably the favorite idea, that the negro race is 
stamped with inferiority, contains as much real ar- 
gument in support of slavery, as any thing alleged 
by its advocates. But this, to have the slightest 
effect, must be carried to the extent of denying the 
humanity of negroes — an extent reached, to be sure, 
by the slave system, in its practical treatment of 
the slave, but never in its laws. The slave code 
recognizes the elements of man in the negro, and 
hence takes pains to extinguish those elements. The 



APOLOGIES FOK SLAVERY. 131 

laws against slaves are evidently not laws against 
brutes. Rationality and manhood are always im- 
plied in the exactions imposed on the negro, and he 
is required not to exercise these qualities of his na- 
ture further or otherwise than may promote the 
interest of his master. In short, the law, finding 
the negro, unfortunately, a man, bids him divest 
himself of manhood, as far as he conveniently can, 
and identify himself with the brute. This contra- 
diction, then, everywhere appears among slave-hold- 
ers : they regard the negro as man, and not man. 
How they can reconcile the contradiction, the world 
has yet to learn. If we admit the humanity of the 
negro, all attempts to defend slavery sink at once 
into contempt. His very weakness and dullness 
become his protection, among all honorable men. 
He stands exempted from abuse by the same law 
which exempts women and children, the sick and 
the lame, the aged and the insane, from injury. 
Their want of equal strength has made it dishonora- 
ble in the extreme, to prey upon them, or even not 
to defend them to the utmost of our power. If the 
negro is really inferior to the white man, either 
mentally or physically, how despicable in us to take 
advantage of this, his weakness, and strip him of 
all his God-given rights! But the assumption < if 
inferiority is altogether gratuitous and improbable. 
If he is inferior, the fact remains to be proved. We 
will not insist on this, however, as, if it could be 



i*-~ 



132 THE HIGHER LAW. 

made out, the whole effect would be to enhance our 
obligations to the colored race, and to throw around 
them a tenderness and a shield, which, as equals, 
they have no right to claim. 

Founded on this idea of inferiority, is the kindred 
notion, that the negro is incapable of self-govern- 
ment and of self-maintenance. Were it true that 
he is too imbecile to discharge the duties of citizen- 
ship, this fact, as above intimated, would only 
throw him more fully upon the charity of the white 
man. It would not render him the prey of his more 
intelligent brethren, but an object of still tenderer 
care. 

Another argument, deemed of great weight, is, an 
alleged forfeiture of all right to freedom, on the part 
of the slave. Just how this forfeiture occurred, we 
are not told, but, if we will believe slave-owners, it 
most certainly exists. The vagueness of such a pre- 
tension might well excuse us from all attempts to 
investigate it ; but it may not be best to take ad- 
vantage of this circumstance. If there has arisen 
any loss of natural rights to the slave, from any 
source, that source must be known. Such an alien- 
ation could only be the effect of law, and of law 
made by a competent authority. But when was 
such a law made by the God of nature? Plainly, 
the record of it is wanting. Still, if a law, working 
such disqualification, be allowed to exist, M'hen and 
how was it violated ? These are questions all im 



APOLOGIES FOR SLAVERY. 



133 



portant to the argument, and if neither the law nor 
its violation can be shown definitely, the alleged 
forfeiture vanishes, 

" Like the baseless fabric of a, vision." 

Yet, the fact of such a loss of original rights, is per- 
tinaciously maintained, though no one has ever 
been absurd enough to profess a belief in the neces- 
sary antecedents. There is, indeed, one circum- 
stance which seems to say, that the existence of 
such a law is an admitted fact, namely, the curse 
pronounced upon Canaan, JSToah said, " cursed be 
Canaan; a servant of servants shall he be unto his 
brethren." But to make this available, it must be 
shown: 1. That the negroes are descendants of 
Canaan. 2. That this passage is a command or de- 
cree, and not a mere prediction. 3. That to be "a 
servant of servants," means chattel slavery. Until 
this is done, the passage cannot be applied to the 
use above specified. 

The only further argument that I shall notice, is 
the plenary power of the civil law to dispose of the 
natural rights of man. It is claimed that what the 
law makes property, is property — that in the dis- 
pensation of God, to civil government is given full 
authority to set up and to put down, to destroy or 
to preserve the rights of man. This claim makes 
negro slavery only a contingent affair, poised wholly 
upon the will of the dominant power. The fallacy 
of such an assumption is very obvious. If human 
7 



134 THE IITGIIER LAW. 

law may thus interfere with the Divine economy, it 
may do any one, or all, of fifty other things^ equally 
pernicious. That is, the power which can set aside, 
without cause, one of our natural rights, can set them 
all aside without cause. This would be to make 
government, not the guardian and conservator of 
human rights, but the ruthless destroyer of them. 
It would put life and all its interests under the con- 
trol of an irresponsible and unimprovable institu- 
tion. However consonant with justice such a view 
of government may be to those who hold slaves, it 
is to others too manifestly absurd to require the 
sli<rhtest refutation. Such an enormous engine of 
tyranny and oppression, as would be the civil law, 
if this were its true exposition, needs only to be 
known in order to be detested by all upright minds. 
Besides, it is a sheer begging of the question. 
There is no evidence that human law has, or can 
have, any power of this kind. If men are allowed 
to assume that law may do whatever it pleases, or 
in other words, that law-makers are under no re- 
straints, then indeed the case is settled. But. as ai! 
men, except those in power, deny the existence of 
such authority, we are bound to reject the preten- 
sion, as insult added to injury — as an attempt to 
cover up fraud by an impudent fiction. 

This miserable subterfuge, which constitutes the 
very animus of Hobbes' political writings, has lately 
been revived and pressed into service by certain 



APOLOGIES FOR SLAVERY. 135 

divines, who favor the fugitive Blave law. Dr. 

Lord may be taken as the representative of this class. 
His doctrine he states in the following- words : 

"In regard to his own worship, and the manner in which 
we are to approach Him, the Supreme Governor has given 
full and minute directions. He has revealed himself, his 
attributes, and the great principles of his government, which 
constitute the doctrines of Christianity, and has conferred 
upon no human authority the right to interfere, by adding 
to or taking from them. In all thino-s that belong to him- 
self, God exercises sole and absolute jurisdiction, and has, in 
regard to them, appointed no inferior or delegated authority. 

" Governments have jurisdiction over men in all affairs 
which belong peculiarly to the present life; in all the tem- 
poral relations which bind societies, communities, and fami- 
lies together, in respect to all rights of person and property, 
and their enforcement by penalties. General rules are in- 
deed laid down in the Scriptures for the regulation of human 
conduct, but God has ordained the 'powers that be' to 
appoint their own municipal laws, to regulate and enforce 
existing relations, and to execute judgment upon offenders, 
under such form of administration as shall be suitable to 
the circumstances of the people, and chosen by themselves. 

" We take the ground, that the action of civil govern- 
ments, within their appropriate jurisdiction, is final and 
conclusive upon the citizen: and that to plead a higher 
law to justify disobedience to a human law, the subject 
matter of which is within the cognizance of the State, is to 
reject the authority of God himself, who has committed to 
governments the power and authority which they exercise 
in civil affairs." 



\S 



136 THE HIGHER LAW. 

These extracts contain two assumptions. 1. That 
the supremacy of the Divine law is confined to 
things pnrelv religious, or what relates directly to 
the worship and service of God himself. 2. That 
governments have, in their particular sphere, unre- 
stricted authority over men. Both assumptions are 
false, as may be easily shown. In reference to the 
first, it is sufficient to say that there is no evidence 
whatever of any such limitation of the Divine su- 
premacy. It is indeed true, that the law of God is 
supreme in matters of worship, but this is not the 
whole truth, for his law has the same supremacy in 
relation to every thing else. The second position is 
equally untenable. The simple fact that civil gov- 
ernment is a Divine institution, does not in the least 
prove that there is no restriction upon it. Govern- 
ments are not left to do right or wrong, just as they 
may choose, but they are bound to do right, and 
only right. They may do wrong, but they must do 
it on their own authority, for God never gives au- 
thority to do wrong. Hence, if governments do 
wrong they do it on their own responsibility, and 
without that authority which renders their acts ob- 
ligatory when they do right. The right to determine 
what is the character of governmental requirements, 
is always with the individual, and not with the 
government. God requires man always to do right, 
and if all the governments of the earth should com- 
bine to force him to sin, he is bound to resist them, 
even unto death. It is a most ridiculous supposi- 



APOLOGIES FOR SLAVERY. 137 

tion, tli.it God should command us " to do to others 
ns \ve would that they should do unto us," and then 
subject us to the authority of a Congressional decree 
which exactly reverses his own command. Dr. 
Lord's hypothetical distribution of supremacy, is a 
fiction of his own brain, and derives not the slight- 
est support from Scripture, or from common sense. 
Such reasoning has not even the small merit of 
plausibility. It is instinctively rejected by every 
sound mind. Suppose that government, to which 
the right of capital punishment clearly appertains, 
should, without any alleged reason, order every tenth 
citizen to be hung, would any man — could any 
man, deem it his duty to obey such a command ? 
Not unless he was willing to incur the guilt of mur- 
der. Thus, in spite of thrones, are governments 
held in check by the higher law of common sense, 
as well as by revelation. 

I have now given a specimen of the reasons — if 
reasons they may be called — on which this gigan- 
tic system of abuse rests. It will be perceived at 
once, that defence is utterly impossible. To argue 
in support of such a system is to burlesque it ; the 
prudent will generally choose to rest their cause on 
prescription, rather than venture a defence, where 
every argument must inevitably be a mockery of 
truth and common sense. This was seen by the 
celebrated Montesquieu, more than a century ago, 
and Ion"- before any effort was made for the aboli- 



138 THE HIGHER LAW. 

tion of the slave trade. This eminent author prof- 
fers the following ironical defence of the system : 

" Were I to vindicate our right to make slaves of the ne- 
groes, these should be my arguments : 

"The Europeans, having extirpated the Americans, were 
obliged to make slaves of the Africans, for clearing such 
vast tracts of land. 

"Sugar would be too dear, if the plants which produce 
it were cultivated by any other than slaves. 

" These creatures are all over black, and with such a flat 
nose, that they can scarcely be pitied. 

" It is hardly to be believed that God, who is a wise be- 
ing, should place a soul, especially a good soul, in such a 
black, ugly body. 

" It is so natural to look upon color as the criterion of hu- 
man nature, that the Asiatics, among whom eunuchs are 
employed, always deprive the blacks of their resemblance 
to us, by a more opprobrious distinction. 

" The color of the skin may be determined by that of the 
hair, which, among the Egyptians, the best philosophers in 
the world, was of such importance, that they put to death 
all the red haired men who fell into their hands. 

"The negroes prefer a glass necklace to that gold which 
polite nations so highly value : can there be a greater proof 
of their wanting common sense ? 

" It is impossible for us to suppose these creatures to be 
men, because, allowing them to be men, a suspicion would 
follow, that we ourselves are not Christians. 

" Weak minds exaggerate too much the wrong done to 
the Africans. For were the case as they state it, would the 
European powers, who make so many needless conventions 



APOLOGIES FOR SLAVERY. 139 

among themselves, have failed to make a general one in be- 
half of humanity and compassion?" — Spirit of Laws: b. 
15, ch. 5. 

A zealous and aide advocate of slaver}^ might 
make a less ludicrous defence, but he could not 
make a more just and truthful one, because vice 
cannot be defended. 



140 THE HIGHEK LAW, 



CHAPTER XII. 

GOVERNMENT AND KELIGION SUBVER- 
SIVE OF SLAVERY. 



I have shown that civil government and Chris- 
tianity are incompatible with slavery ; my object 
now is, to show that the obligation to maintain these 
institutions, is an obligation to extirpate slavery. 
The simple fact of incompatibility, doe?, in itself, 
ensure the destruction of slavery, for government 
and religion cannot co-exist with this fearful antag- 
onist principle. But the duty of extending the 
former, necessarily inhibits and excludes the latter. 
It brings opposite elements into conflict, and ren- 
ders it indispensable that wrong should give place 
to right. The obligation to maintain government, 
is an obligation to maintain the rights of the gov- 
erned. Slavery and government are, therefore, 
inimical. But, it may be said, that slavery implies 
government, and we concede the fact, although the 
concession amounts to nothing. Such governmenl 
as slavery implies, is a cause, and not a blessing; 
but the govermnenl which God has ordained, and 
which alone is lawful, is a blessing, and not a curse. 



GOVERNMENT AND RELIGION, &C. 141 

Its design is to uphold the natural rights of man, and 
especially to protect the weaker members of society 
against injuries from those who are stronger, or vi- 
ciously disposed. This obvious intent of civil law, 
is wholly lost sight of, in the infamous system of sla- 
very. Instead of conserving the liberty of the Afri- 
can, government robs him of every vestige of natural 
or acquired right, and dooms to the most abject servi- 
tude, both him and his posterity, down to the latest 
generation. It is not possible for a beneficent 
institution to inflict such a gross outrage as this. 
And we are constained to hold the government ad- 
ministered by slave-holders, as mere tyranny. It is 
not government, in any proper sense of the term ; 
it is tyrannical usurpation, operating where, and 
only where, government has been overthrown. 

The extirpation of slavery is, then, not optional 
with patriotism ; it is a work that must be taken in 
hand by all who would preserve the existence of 
civil government, and particularly by all those who 
aim to extend the blessings of social order. Ac- 
cordingly, we find all upheavings of the masses — all 
political revolution and resistance to governmental 
abuses, connected with a recognition of original and 
imprescriptible rights. Men feel that they should 
be treated as men; and because they are not so 
treated, they renounce and crush — but not so fre- 
quently as they should — the iniquitous usurpation 
of tyrants. All this is but an instinctive yearning 
for a good which civil establishments ought always 
7* 



142 THE HIGHER LAW. 

to afford, but which is too often prevented by wicked 
men, who prostitute them to their own aggrandize- 
ment. 

To charge those who oppose slavery with being 
enemies of government, and with anarchical de- 
signs, is the grossest injustice. Tyranny is the only 
anarchy, and tyrants are the only anarchists. These 
break down civil law, and subvert government ; 
these, by the mere wantonness of power, strip men 
of their rights, without even the forms of justice. 
For slave-holders and other tyrants to complain of 
seditious or treasonable conduct, on the part of anti- 
slavery men, is most ridiculous affectation — most 
insulting malignity. The old fable says, that the 
wolf and the lamb were drinking together, out of 
the same stream, but the lamb, though farthest 
down the stream, was accused by the wolf, of roil- 
ing the water ! Surely, nothing but this wolfish 
propensity can induce any one to charge civil dis- 
turbance upon those who only seek to break the 
chains of the slave, and restore to him his inaliena- 
ble rights. The real disturber of the peace, is he 
who took away these rights — not he that brings 
them back. Humanity has a right to replevy the 
sacred treasure of personal liberty, and none but 
those who have feloniously seized it, will ever com- 
plain. 

Every attempt to administer justice in a slave 
state, must stand rebuked by those mute, uncom- 
plaining objects, who have been struck dumb by 



GOVERNMENT AND RELIGION, &C. 143 

one vast act of oppression. Why shall there be 
courts of justice among those who have scouted all 
justice ? " Thou that preachest a man should not 
steal, dost thou steal ?" As slavery is the vilest of 
robbery, and the most enormous injustice which 
man can possibly commit, it would seem that those 
who practice it should never profess attachment to 
the principles of equity, or evince any respect for 
those rules by which justice is Administered among 
upright men. 

But however great may be the antagonism between 
government and slavery, it is much less than that 
between religion and slavery. The whole substance 
of religion is utterly destroyed by slavery ; not a 
single virtue does it leave untouched. Christianity, 
for instance, teaches justice and even kindness 
towards all men, not excepting our enemies ; but 
slavery reverses this, by denying either justice or 
kindness to the colored man. Slavery strips him of 
his manhood, and nut only converts him into a 
brute, but fixes his market value, and holds him for 
sale with other articles of commerce. No apology 
can be made for such an audacious crime — none 
was ever attempted that did not enhance the guilt 
of him who made it. The usual .sophistries with 
which the case has been met, have had too much 
indulgence shown them. "Wrong so monstrous, 
is always premeditated, and to defend it, is to 
purposely mislead. In like manner we might 
adduce every virtue enjoined by the gospel, and the 



144 THE HIGHER LAW. 

system of slavery would show itself the implacable 
enemy of them all. This is emphatically true of 
those virtues which, from their being less spiritual, 
are more akin to the duties enjoined by the civil 
law ; but the difference is still greater in the high 
department of faith, where benevolence and spiritu- 
ality give such vast expansion to active goodness. 
Naked justice and simple kindness fall almost in- 
finitely below the* spotless sanctity and burning 
charity peculiar to the kingdom of God. Now, if 
slavery is the very opposite of common justice, how 
satanical must it appear, when contrasted with this 
exalted purity ! The man, whose heart is pervaded 
by this heavenly virtue, is so far from enslaving his 
brother man, that he would himself wear the chains, 
rather than put them on the negro. 

" I would not have a slave to till my ground, 

To carry me, to fan me while I sleep, 

And tremble when I wake, fur all the wealth 

That sinews, bought ami sold, have ever earned. 

No : dear as freedom is, and in my heart's 

Just estimation prized above all price, 

I had much rather be myself the slave, 

And wear the bonds, than bates them on him." — Task. 

A religion that breathes such moral excellence, 
can never have any affinity with slavery — can nei- 
ther adopt it, nor consecrate it, nor tolerate it. 
Such light can have no fellowship with such dark- 
ness. And the duty of spreading this religion, in- 
voles unceasing warfare against the slave system. 
"VYe cannot teach men to keep the law of God, without 
teaching them to break the slave law. Nor may 



GOVERNMENT AND RELIGION, &C. 145 

we teach them merely to break the slave law — 
they must be made to abhor it, and fly from it as 
they would from hell itself. Religion is, in short, 
a total disqualification for slave-holding ; it inca- 
pacitates men for such wickedness ; their natures 
become too refined, too upright, for such enormi- 
ties. As slavery is vice, its extirpation must result 
from the prevalence of virtue — that is, a pure re- 
ligion. No other effect can be anticipated, for no 
other is possible — religion must either extirpate sin, 
or itself be extirpated by sin. All Christians are, 
therefore, necessarily opposed to slavery, and, so far 
as they have any evangelical goodness, actively en- 
gaged in the work of emancipation. And the war 
now going on against slavery, is only the kingdom of 
Christ arraying itself against antichrist. 



146 THE HIGHER LAW. 



CHAPTER XIII. 

CAPACITY OF SLAYES FOE CIYIL GOV- 
ERNMENT. 



Haves t g noticed (chap, xi.) the usual objections to 
emancipation, particularly those founded on the 
alleged inferiority of the African race, and on their 
supposed incapacity for self-government, I shall 
now attempt to show, not as in the aforesaid chap- 
ter, that these things, if true, constitute no apology 
for slavery — but that they are totally false assump- 
tions. Tyrants have always assigned as the reason 
for their usurptions, that the people were incompe- 
tent to govern themselves. This charge of incom- 
petency is a gross and willful imposture. It is a 
pretext that can hardly be said to have the poor 
merit of plausibility. What great strength of mind 
or of body have rulers ever exhibited above the 
people whom they ruled ? Had Nero more capa- 
city for civil government than any other man in the 
Roman empire? Or, rather, could any other man 
in Home or out of Rome have governed worse? This 
course of reasoning is applicable to all who have 
swayed the rod of empire, and in too many instances 



CAPACITY OF SLAVES, &C. 147 

with precisely the same result. Emperors, kings, 
and governors, instead of being wiser, or better, or 
more competent in any respect for the duties of gov- 
ernment, than their subjects, have too generally been 
notorious for depravity and imbecility — have sunk 
far below the average level of virtue in their own 
dominions, and proved a curse, instead of blessing, 
to those whom they governed. Why then this idle 
talk of the necessity, of superior abilities in those 
who govern? And why affirm so unhesitatingly, 
that even the lowest in the scale of intelligence and 
virtue are not capable of government ? Rulers 
have generally been quite as ignorant and debased, 
as the people from among whom they were taken 
and placed in authority. The idea that wisdom 
centres in public authority, or in men who are acci- 
dentally at the head of political affairs, is very fool- 
ish ; it implies a total ignorance of the true nature 
of civil government. Office-holders, whether kings, 
or governors, or legislators, are only servants of the 
public, and have no other means of becoming capa- 
ble of exercising civil authority, than have those 
who employ them — those who give them all their 
power. The people are proprietors, under God, of 
civil institutions, and it is extremely absurd to sup- 
pose that they are not capable of managing their 
own affairs. For rulers to claim superior fitness, is 
proof of dishonesty ; it shows that there is treachery, 
and that the charge of incompetency serves only to 
conceal the fraud. 



14S TIIE HIGHER LAW. 

Ignorance is a term which must be applied to 
slaves with great care. The slave is a man, and 
man cannot be so ignorant as to be incapable of 
civil government. A brute is thus ignorant, be- 
cause he is a brute ; God did not give him the 
faculties necessary to civil order, nor can he ever 
acquire them. But to man, these faculties are 
given by his Creator; and they belong inalienably 
to his constitution. lie has these powers as he has 
life — not by education and custom, but by the hand 
of God, which formed him a rational creature. The 
attempt to put him in the category of brutes, merely 
because he has not undergone a long course of train- 
ing in republican forms, is either a very stupid 
blunder, or a dastardly piece of injustice. 

But it may be said that slaves are illiterate, and 
therefore disqualified for civil duties, inasmuch as 
such duties require a knowledge of written law. 
This argument takes for granted that literature is 
essential to virtue; but the history of the world 
shows quite the contrary. Many who could not 
read, have proved themselves capable of the noblest 
deeds, while many others, though possessed of learn- 
ing, have exhibited nothing but meanness. It is 
altogether a mistake to suppose (hat literature, in 
any shape or degree, is indispensable to freedom. 
A> well might we deem it indispensable to the diges- 
tion of food, or the circulation of the blood. Letters 
are only a convenience, invented by man, but liberty 
is an element of his nature, derived from the Crea- 



CAPACITY OF SLATES, &C. 149 

ting hand. Not to have the former, is to lack an 
important branch of education ; not to have the 
latter, is to be less than man : the one is non-im- 
provement; the other, mutilation. 

With like inconsistency, it has been pretended 
that freedom can be conferred only by degrees — 
that liberty should be only gradually introduced 
among the oppressed. We might waive all remarks 
here, as even gradual emancipation is never pro- 
posed by slave-holders. But the question has its 
interest, since there are emancipationists who are 
horror struck at the thought of immediate enfran- 
chisement. They would have the chains of the 
slave broken, link by link, and so slowly that an 
age would hardly suffice to liberate him. And all 
this, from an erroneous notion that enduring the 
misfortunes and abuses of a vile tyranny, is the best 
preparation for liberty. If preparation is necessary, 
in order to freedom, most certainly it will have 
to be found in something besides chattel slavery. 
How can the complete annihilation of political rights 
and immunities, fit people for the proper use of such 
rights and immunities? As well put out a man's 
eyes to help his vision, or cut off his feet to quicken 
his pace. We deny, however, that any preparation 
is necessary. Liberty being the birth-righl of man, 
the natural and normal condition of his existence, 
all the preparation he needs for its enjoyment is 
born with him. He gets his fitness for liberty, as 
he gets his hands and his feet — not by education, 



150 THE HIGHER LAW. 

but by inheritance. It is born with him, and con- 
stitutes a part of his being. We may see by the 
family relation, what is demanded in the weakest 
condition of human nature. Children require pa- 
rental control, and so may very ignorant adults; 
but there is nothing in the government of a family 
analogous to slavery. No child is subject to sale, 
no right which can safely be exercised is withheld, 
and the whole course of discipline and restraint is 
one of tenderness. But what is more, the disabili- 
ties of children are temporary ; as soon as they 
attain to a given age, the law confers on them 
whatever was withheld during minority. If the 
boon of citizenship thus inured to the slave, he 
would have all the preparation for liberty which 
the nature of man can be supposed to require. AVe 
do not, however, regard the minority of children as 
intended merely to prepare them for the duties and 
immunities of civil life. Their physical helpless- 
ness, which for several years is such that they 
would perish, if left to themselves, is the grand 
reason why they are placed under parental care. 
Other advantages grow out of this dependence, and 
the child doubtless finds in the family authority 
milder and better control than could be adminis- 
tered by the State. 

It is clear, therefore, that the gradual (.'mancipa- 
tion of adults, finds no support from the gradual 
emancipation, if such it may be called, of children. 
The latter are physically and mentally incompe- 



CAPACITY OF SLAVES, &C. 151 

tent to the task of life ; they must be protected and 
cherished by others, till nature brings them to suf- 
ficient maturity, to render them independent. This 
maturity the adult slave has already gained, and 
the law should at once enfranchise him. There is, 
moreover, this difference : in the case of children, 
privileges are only held in abeyance — not extin- 
guished. The child is an heir, is as fully protected 
from injury as the adult, and no right can be taken 
from him. On the contrary, the rights of the slave 
are totally destroyed, and this, irrespective of age, 
or physical or mental condition. 

That ignorant people are not fitted for self-gov- 
ernment, or rather, for civil freedom, is a notion 
long current in certain* quarters, and for very obvi- 
ous reasons. It is the interest of rulers to create 
this impression, that their services may be the more 
esteemed. Such a plea serves Well as an excuse 
for usurpation. Dynasties would soon tumble into 
ruins, but for this aspersion of human capacity. 
Were it understood that people — -any people, even 
the most ignorant — could dispense with tyranny and 
suffer no harm, where would be the Bupport of un- 
righteous authority \ Rulers would sink into ser- 
vants ; they would govern for the people, and not 
for themselves. This deception is based, in part, 
on the idea that freedom requires unusual ability. 
It lias come to be a prevalent opinion, that a good 
government is fit only for the best of people — the 
most wise, intelligent and virtuous. I3ut on this 



152 THE UIGIIER LAW. 

principle, it might be maintained that bad children 
should have bad parents, or that sick people should 
have worse treatment than those in health. Surely, 
if a difference is to be made, humanity requires that 
the burden should not be thrown upon the weak — 
that a bad government should not be inflicted on 
those who have the least skill in political aii'airs. 
If good government is wanted any where, it is 
among the ignorant and the vile. The end of civil 
institutions is protection ; but protection oppresses 
no one. To secure the rights of individuals, in a 
bad state of society, may require greater efficiency 
and care in government ; yet, this can never be a 
reason for tyranny, because tyranny is not protec- 
tion, and, therefore, not the object which govern 
ment has in view. 

Civil law is to man, as any other essential want 
of his nature. lie needs government just as he 
needs food, and there is no more incapacity in him 
fdi' one of these things than tor the other; nor is 
there any necessity that his wants, in either case, 
should he supplied with what is deteriorated and 
vile. He can endure the depravation of food, quite 
a- well as the depravation of government. The 
whole history of mankind shows that tyranny can 
evolve nothing but tyranny — that governmental 
evils have no tendency to sell-correction, and that 
the elevation of the slave cannot he promoted by 
even his temporary subjection to despotism. ( >p- 
pression may lead to revolution, and often does, but 



CAPACITY OF SLAVES, &C. 153 

it has not the slightest power to clevelope fitness for 
liberty. It may indeed generate a deep abhorrence 
of tyranny, and thus increase the love of freedom ; 
still, as this abhorrence and this love are instinc- 
tive traits of man, they scarcely need snch an un- 
natural expansion. The desire for liberty, like the 
desire for justice, or food, or health, is naturally 
strong enough, and nothing is gained by the arti- 
ficial stimulus consequent upon misgovernment. 
Political freedom is only political justice, and all 
men are as ready for this description of justice, as 
for any other. It will be as harmless to give them 
full freedom, as it would be to give them full light 
for the eye, or full air for the lungs, or full pay for 
honest dues. 

The following remarks are so pertinent to the 
general question now under consideration, that I 
cannot deny myself the pleasure of inserting them. 

"The next fallacy is, that freedom should follow, but 
never lead, a true civilization ; that it is the crown and cap- 
ital, but not the base. It is an axiom with us, that we, 
only, are fit for liberty. It seems to be supposed that a 
despotism has some secret nourifhmctit of liberty in it, 
and that after a certain time, free institutions will result 
from it. What evidence of progress have we in China and 
Japan ? Why were not Persia and the old monarchies 
gradually prepared for free institutions ? Because despot- 
ism dwarfs men — necessarily dwarfs them, and lies on 
them as a blight and canker. When we are told, therefore, 
to wait before we assist other nations, let us inquire what 



1/ 



154 THE HIGHEE LAW. 

we are waiting upon ? We are waiting until despotism 
has done its peifect work — until it has slain the hope and 
vitality of the oppressed. Do you say that education is fa- 
vored by despotism. Yes, and let China, Austria, and 
storied Italy answer what are the results of art, literature 
and scholarship in the matter of emancipation. The study 
and the cell make the artist and scholar lree, but they give 
him liberty, too often misused to the oppression of his fel- 
lows. They are not apt to encourage that state of things 
■which interferes with their seclusion. Literature and art 
have not been the friends of liberty, but the most obsequi- 
ous servants of absolutism. Nor does popular education 
•do much more. It may make only a race of curious dream- 
ers, rather than of energetic men. What is education but 
a tool, which depends for its value upon the hand that holds 
it? Reading and writing cannot conjure intelligence into 
humanity or out of it. Pigs may be taught to read. Edu- 
cation is not education when it leaves the scholar passive. 
The old schoolmen were only elaborately ignorant, differing 
from other men as a parrot which can talk differs from one 
which cannot. He who sneaks no senseat all in several 
languages, will pass for more than he who speaks sulid 
sense in only one. Popular education owes its value to a 
roused intelligence. Our institutions are our educators. I 
heard Kossuth say, when he meant the universal people, 
the university of the people. Yes, freedom is that, it is the 
u: iversity of the people. So it is not our religious educa- 
tion that fosters our love of liberty, but it is liberty which 
fosters the Church. In despotic lands is religion always 
begetting freedom ? Is the bench of Bishops in England 
perpetually presenting schemes of progress and reform? 
Issachar is a strong ass, bending between two burdens — the 
taxing State and the grinding Church. In America, the 



CAPACITY OF SLAVES, &C. 155 

clergy ate free and preach liberty, because the spirit of the 
country allows it. Liberty is the first interest of a nation. 
It sets humanity going, and keeps it going. The other in- 
fluences are regulating, this is conservative. The prosper- 
ity of this country is owing to the wonderful activity of 
human faculties here. 

" What, then, ought to be our hore, prayer and act for 
other nations? While they are content with de;.th, ought 
we to be content for them ? While we acknowledge that 
liberty alone is the life of the race, that it, only, underlies 
and inspires prosperity — what shall we do and say ? Is the 
breaking of this bastile of despotism to make no more noise 
than the breaking of an egg for breakfast? Is order to be 
purchased at every price? Are nations lying like lambs, 
and tyrants hanging over them like butchers, to excite no 
word ;md no act from us, because the slaughter-house is not 
on our own shores? Nothing but liberty can save a nation 
from a broken heart and moral death. We must expect 
disorder from the resurrection of nations. Poor, old, bed- 
ridden humanity may break the furniture of her chamber 
■when she begins to walk — when she escapes frcm the nurses 
who have been keeping her ill, that they might more con- 
veniently consume her estate. But she must forth, she has 
a right to walk, although every step should be an earth- 
quake, — although she tumble over thrones and privileges 
as she advances." — Rev. II. W. Bellows, (recent lecture at 
the Tabernacle, JY. Y.) 



150 THE niGRER LAW. 



CHAPTER XIV. 
THE FUGITIVE SLAVE LAW. 



Tnis law, so justly offensive to the free states, and 
so exactly in harmony with the slave states, is only 
a farther development of that gigantic system of 
robbery, which the federal government has always 
tolerated, and often encouraged. It was natural 
that slave-holders should wish to do everywhere 
what they do where slavery is allowed, and hence, 
they spare no pains to secure the passage of such 
laws, by Congress, as will enable them to recover 
fugitive slaves in the most summary manner. In 
substance, the fugitive slave law is like all other 
slave laws ; it is characterized by the same total 
disregard of personal rights and sheer contempt for 
humanity. It is not more cruel than the ordinary 
legislation of slave states, nor is it less so; and had 
it taken place in slave territory — had its operation 
been confined to people already accustomed to 
slave-holding — it would have excited no unfavora- 
ble remark. But when it is attempted to transfer 
a portion of the slave law to tree states, and make 
it operative there, nothing but the most absolute co~ 



THE FUGITIVE SLAVE LAW. 157 

ercion can render the experiment successful. How 
far such coercion is available, remains to be seen. 

The law was introduced into Congress and passed 
by that bodv, on the basis of the constitution. The 
following is the clause on which this master-piece 
of legislation rests : 

" No person held to service or labor in one state, under 
the laws thereof, escaping into another, shall, in consequence 
of any law or regulation therein, be discharged from such 
labor; but shall be delivered up on claim of the party to 
whom such labor or service may be due." — Const. U. S. 
A.: art. 1, sec. 2. 

Here we evidently have a compromise. The 
non-slave-holding states are forbidden to make any 
law emancipating such slaves as flee from the slave 
states. But for this protective clause in the consti- 
tution, the free states would, unquestionably, have 
made every African free on entering their limits. 
Whether the compromise is, in itself, a violation of 
human rights, and whether it makes the general 
government, to all intents and purposes, a slave- 
holding power, are points on which there is some 
difference of opinion. From the circumstances of 
the case, as well as from the very cautious and spar- 
ing reference to slavery in the constitution, I judge 
that there was no intention to assume the guilt or 
to foster the institution of slavery. Still, all men 
must regret the existence of such a compromise, as 
it certainly tolerates, if it does not sanction slavery. 
8 



158 THE HIGHER LAW. 

In forming a confederacy out of independent states, 
part of them averse to the continuance of slavery 
and part otherwise, it became necessary to make 
some concessions ; but philanthropists have always 
deplored that such a concession as this was de- 
manded, or admitted. It was purchasing union at 
too costly a rate. The specific objections to the fugi- 
tive slave law, which has grown out of this unfor- 
tunate clause, are as follows : 

It is imconstitutional. 

That the constitution gives to the slave-holder a 
right to recover his absconding slave, is beyond dis- 
pute. ]STo state may annul the claim of the master, 
or prevent his seizing his slave wherever he can find 
him. The sympathies of freemen are held in check, 
so far as to refrain from all emancipating legislation 
in aid of the fugitive. This is the extent of the 
compromise, and thus far the supervision of Con- 
gress might lawfully extend, according to the terms 
of the national compact. All laws for the emanci- 
pation, concealment, or non-release of fugitive slaves, 
were prohibited by the constitution, and might be 
pronounced null and void by the United States Ju- 
diciary. Had Congress done no more than this, the 
rights of freemen would have remained intact, save 
in the check put upon the active exercise of that 
benevolence which is due. to the oppressed. But 
the present fugitive slave law creates a special court, 
and clothes that court with special and unprece- 



THE FUGITIVE SLATE LAW. 159 

dented powers, for the sole purpose of accommoda- 
ting slave-holders, by effecting a speedy reclamation 
of alleged fugitive-. It is needless to say that the 
language of the constitution, on which this extraor- 
dinary enactment depends, gives no authority to 
Congress to institute any court whatever ; much 
less does it authorize the establishment of such tri- 
bunals as now decide the fate of those whom slave- 
holders claim as their property. 

Freemen are liable to be enslaved. 

It is true that the innocent are always liable to 
be ensnared, by laws intended only for the guilty, 
but the danger in this instance is pre-eminent and 
needless. Evidence, exceedingly scant, and drawn 
from remote sources, and even from questionable 
persons, is allowed to fix the doom of a man forever, 
and all his children after him. The jury — that 
palladium of legal rights — is dispensed with, as 
though it were not safe to adjudicate claims to prop- 
erty consisting in man, with the same care that is 
necessary when the property in dispute is a horse! 
The constitution, in allowing the slave-holder to re^ 
claim his slave, cannot be understood as waiving 
the ordinary forms of justice, by which human 
rights are settled. Why such despatch in a matter 
of such inconceivable importance to one of the par- 
ties litigant '. Even conceding that the slave, though 
a man, can never be entitled to the rights of man, 
why shall other men — the free-born blacks, who 



160 TIIE HIGHER LAW. 

are not slaves, and never were — be subjected to this 
imminent peril ? The law exposes every colored man 
in the free states to the rapacity of kidnappers. 
Under the pretence of accelerating the reclamation 
of fugitives, it breaks down all the barriers of free- 
dom, and consigns the unoffending freeman to hope- 
less bondage. This would be quite consistent in a 
slave state, where all colored men are considered 
lawful prey ; but it is monstrous in a state where 
personal rights are sacred, whatever may be the 
complexion of the skin. 

It exacts of freemen a service which they cannot 
conscientiously rendi r. 

The law not only secures the rendition of slaves, 
but compels northern men to lend themselves as in- 
struments in this abominable work. Thus, a man 
who abhors slavery as he docs murder, must pay a 
fine, and perhaps suffer imprisonment, or assist the 
proper authorities in remanding the fugitive to his 
chains. The constitution — sadly :is it compro- 
mises — has nothing of this; it barely gives the 
slave-owner permission to recover, by such means as 
may be in his power, the man who fiees from him. 
But by this regulation, men who scorn the unholy 
business of slave-holding and slave-catching, are 
forced to engage in it, or openly resist the law and in- 
cur its penalties. Surely, it was enough that all 
the generous and humane feelings of freemen should 
be stifled, or restricted to a merely faithful investi- 



THE FUGITIVE SLAVE LAW. 161 

gation of the slave-holder's claim, without this ne- 
cessity of defiling themselves, by assisting to mana- 
cle one whose right to liberty is at least as good as 
their own, and whose misfortunes commend him so 
powerfully to every philanthropic mind. Let men 
who believe it right to rob the colored man, do this 
work if they will, but let no other man be com- 
pelled to aid them in the crime. 

It makes the free states slave Jtunting-grounJ. 

Not content with denying all aid to the slave, 
this law makes him an object to be sought with 
avidity through every free state in the Union. It 
converts the non-slave-holding states into a vast 
theatre for slave-catching. Africa itself could hard- 
ly afford better facilities. Any man at the South 
who may wish to increase his slave population, has 
only to make an incursion upon the North, and seize 
negroes wherever he meets them. This done, the 
smothered, summary, mock trial which follows, af- 
fords but a slight obstacle to success. Never had 
kidnapping greater conveniences; never had ava- 
rice, lust, and cruelty, a better chance to prey upon 
tiie Innocent and the helpless. The free colored 
people of the North are literally given up to destruc- 
tion, and the whole country is made a recruiting 
ground for slavery. A business — slave-import- 
ing — which the federal government justly treat- ;i- 
piraey, when carried on between Africa and this 
country, is sanctioned and vindicated on the soil of 



162 THE HIGHER LAW. 

every free republican state. To seize, or even to 
purchase slaves in a foreign land, and bring them 
home, is death ; but they may be seized and im- 
ported, by government authority, and at government 
expense, too, from any neighboring state in the Un- 
ion. This is the climax of horrors. 

The expense of recovering slaves is unjustly thrown 
upon the national treasury. 

It would be exceedingly wrong in a slave-holding 
state to make the treasury sustain such a burden, 
unless all were slave-holders, and had an equal in- 
terest in the re-capture of fugitives. But the wrong 
is greatly enhanced when the expense devolves on 
the general government, whose revenues are chiefly 
derived from non-slave-holding states. The consti- 
tution gives no intimation of such an expenditure 
and we cannot believe that either the framers of 
that instrument, or the people who adopted it, would 
have consented to such an arrangement. As well 
might the cost of returning stray cattle or horses be 
charged to the nation. Slaves are held as personal 
property, and it was quite enough that the free 
states should be prohibited the exercise of hospital- 
ity towards them, without being compelled to share 
in the expense of their re-enslavement. Yes, it was 
enough thai they must witness the hunting of slaves 
in their midst, and on their own free soil, without 
being obliged to defray the cost of such an infamous 
transaction. 



THE FUGITIVE SLAVE LAW. 163 

It makes the United Stah s a slave-holding nation. 

The constitution does but tolerate slavery, where- 
as the fugitive slave law endorses and approves it. 
The former was only a compromise measure, in 
which nothing was granted that could be withheld ; 
the latter is a voluntary grant of every thing that 
could be granted. The latter, we are aware, was 
intended as a compromise, but it is not so much a 
compromise as a surrender. It yields to the slave- 
catcher all that the most unbounded cruelty and in- 
satiate avarice could demand. It takes from the 
African race all humanity, in all parts of the nation, 
and makes freemen every where the servile tools of 
slaveocratic injustice. Until this infamous conces- 
sion, the non-slave-holder might regard himself as 
free from all positive connection with slavery. Xei- 
their his hands nor his money were at the command 
of the slave-holder ; but under this law, no man 
is exempt. Slave-catching has become a national 
business, and every man is compelled to engage in 
it. Thus quickly has the bare permission to re-cap- 
ture fugitive slaves among us, ripened into an obli- 
gation to do this work ourselves. 

These are the principal features of this strange 
piece of legislation. We bave no wish to exaggerate 
its defects, and certainly they are beyond apology. 
The studied contempt with which it treats the free- 
men of the North, could hardly have been greater, 
and is unusual ; but its persevering inhumanity to 



164 THE HIGHER LAW. 

the negro is only characteristic, and not excessive 
beyond precedent. Towards him, legislation long 
since did its worst ; there was no new degree of 
oppression to be reached ; his rights had all been 
utterly swept away before. Of course, this mnst 
be understood of the slave states, as the national 
government, though crippled by compromise, had 
not, until the enactment of this law, arrayed itself 
on the side of the oppressor. The African, when 
not a slave, was treated, if not like other men, yet 
like a human being — like one to whose interests the 
law was not wholly indifferent — like one who was 
to be protected, rather than destroyed by venge- 
ful statutes. 

We are very sorry the constitution contains any 
thing that can, in the remotest degree, be pressed 
into this slave-catching business. When men have 
had the courage and adroitness to throw off their 
chains, they certainly ought to meet, at the hands of 
a government which began its own career by an- 
nouncing "that all men are created equal," some- 
thing better than a re-enslavement. But the consti- 
tution is not justly chargeable with the present 
fugitive slave law. The former is to the hitter, as 

"Hyperion to a Satyr." 

There neither is, nor can be, any sort of resemblance 
between the two, except that both are entities. Our 
chary constitution, too scrupulous and sensitive to 
pollute itself with even the word slavery, cannot, 

with decency, be made responsible for the grand 



THE FUGITIVE SLAVE LAW. 105 

kidnapping law under which slave-holders are now 
rioting. 

Surely there is nothing in it that forbids a trial 
by jury, or that mulcts with heavy damages men 
who cannot conscientiously engage in slave-catch • 
ing — nothing that makes the general government 
pay all expenses of returning fugitives, or that obli- 
gates it to create a special court, and to endow that 
court witli dangerous powers, for the re-capture of 
Blaves. Simply requiring a state not to pass a law 
enfranchising the slave who comes within its bounds, 
and requiring further, that the fugitive shall be giv- 
en up, cannot, without the greatest violence, be 
construed into such a disgraceful and ruinous thing 
as is the fugitive slave law. We have a law re- 
quiring prisoners ard felons who have escaped to 
other states, to be given up on the requisition of the 
governor; but the slave is not dignified with any 
form of requisition — he is prosecuted and taken 
back with less ceremony than a common felon. And 
be it remembered, that all free colored men, yes, 
and all free white men, are every hour exposed to 
this summary process. The fugitive slave law knows 
nothing of color : it takes effect on " persons held to 
labor," be they white or black, and tries them with 
whatever of evidence may chance to lie at hand. 

Congress was supporting the constitution at a 
strange rate, when it receded more than two centu- 
ries and made this fugitive law. A little more such 
support, and our political fabric will tumble into 



166 THE niGHER LAW. 

chaos. Sucli bungling is too horrible for endurance ; 
and it is especially insupportable when charged up- 
on the patriotic fathers of the republic — men "who 
abolished the slave trade, and who did all in their 
power to abolish slavery at home. 

Some additional features of this law, together 
with its practical workings, are very forcibly ex- 
pressed in the following extract : 

"There are reasons intrinsic to the bill, that will make it 
a loathing, and will, when it comes to be fully known, make 
it, we believe, the most odious act with which flagitious 
legislation ever abused public confidence. 

" One would have thought that an end so atrocious as 
this legal slave trade — as much worse than African, as it 
is worse to steal a man conscious of worth and eager for 
liberty, than it would be to steal a wild savage, ignorant of 
rights and dignities, should have been sought in the most 
gentle and unobtrusive ways. But no. It breaks in upon 
the community like a hyena. It prostrates the great barri- 
ers which civilization has erected about individual rights — 
the habeas corpus act, the right of trial by jury, and often 
practically the right to confront one's accusers. That noth- 
ing might be wanting to render an infamous thing consist- 
ently infamous throughout, the bill provides a bribe of five 
dollars to the commissioner for every man tried, and ten for 
every man convicted ! Five dollars for acquittal and twice 
as much for conviction! 

"Here is a government agent, with the powers of a civil 
court, whose salary depends upon the number of cases he 
can biing before him, and doubles whenever he convicts 
the arraigned ! Who would go before a court of his coun- 
try if he knew that the judge had a pecuniary interest in 



TOE FUGITIVE SLAVE LAW. 167 

his conviction ? And yet the rights and liberties of thou- 
sands and thousands of men are, under this bill, to be adju- 
dicated, without tiial by jury, without appeal, upon testi- 
mony unregulated, save by the judgment of the commissioner, 
who is made personally and pecuniarily interested in every 
conviction ! 

" There is one deep lower yet. If a wretch, endeavoring 
to escape the fangs of this venomous reptile, this coil of ser- 
pents, be aided by a humane man, heavy fines and bonds 
await such beneficence! 

" Ought ihey to be deemed prudent men or safe guides, 
who assure the South that such a law will be executed in 
the North ? 

" Yet there are some reasons why we, too, rejoice in the 
execution of this law. 

"We are glad, because every slave taken from our midst 
back to slavey is an appeal to humanity against oppression. 
It is bringing the abomination of slavery to our very door. 
We are not obliged now to stretch our eyes across the 
ocean to Africa, to see men snatched up as they fly from 
burning villages or captured in war, and shipped for Chris- 
tian markets. Slave catching may now be pursued in New 
York, in Boston, in Pittsburgh, in Cincinnati. It requires 
but two lying witnesses to doom any black man. It re- 
quired only three hours to convert a respectable, honest, 
industrious free laborer in our streets into a slave under the 
plantation lash. When these things are done in the South 
they get cool before they reach us; but now we are to have 
slave-hunting, slave-catching and slave-making on our own 
premises. Is it by such means that the public mind is to 
be quieted ? Is this the way to avoid and allay excite- 
ment, of which certain presses have had such dread? Will 
there be no violence, no bloodshed among those poor fugi- 



168 THE HIGHER LAW. 

tives, whose love of liberty is as strong as ours, and who, 
like us, would sooner die than go into slavery ? Are the 
arguments to which we are to yield our anti-slavery doc- 
trines, irons on honest men's wrists ; families broken up — 
a Hallet at one blow struck out of the catalogue of 
men, his wife and children left without even the privilege 
of saying farewell ? Are these to be means of grace to all 
who have agitated the public in the matter of slavery ? 

"We 'rejoice,' too, that we are spared anv further argu- 
ment against the abominations of the fugitive slave bill. 
That bill is now pleading against itself. The law doing its 
work, is the only argument needed for men whose hearts 
are flesh. While the bill was at Washington it was a mere 
shadow. It was not possible to make our citizens feel that 
the public men, whom they revered, could give voice and 
vote for anything really inimical to liberty. Bu< it is no 
shadow now. The law stands in our streets — with eye of 
fire searching every trembling black man; with feet of wind 
it pursues, and with hands of iron it grasps him. The bill 
is in our courts. The officers obey it Judges and com- 
missioners are crouching before it. Slavery has its guar- 
dian genius spreading its dragon wings over the bench of 
justice, and beneath its frown our officials quail and yield? 
Overawed, they will give up the slave, that is no slave, 
but of right, in his own blood, and by the blood of Christ, 
a freeman! It is oood for our reflecting men to see these 
tilings. We protested against the bill while it was travail- 
inn U1 birth. Our words only brought reproaches. Since 
then, the thing must come, we are glad; we 'rejoice,' that 
sober and humane men will deal no longer with an ab- 
straction, but are forced to see a living law feeding on 
injustice, and spewing blood in our streets. 

" We ' rejoice' that men who have tasted of liberty, who 



TEIE FUGITIVE SLAVE LAW. 1G9 

have been made intelligent by it, if sent back to sla- 
ver)-, will not go as the}- came. They return missionaries, 
teachers of liberty and escape wherever they go. Put 
them in prison, put them in coffles, send them in gangs 
southward; prison*, irons, travel and the biting lash will 
never obliterate what they have learned. It is a wonderful 
providence that the South should send their shrewdest 
slaves to the North, until they have become thoroughly 
trained to liberty, and then send for them to come back, 
and spread the infection from plantation to plantation ! 

" We solemnly appeal to Christians of every i ame, to all 
sober and humane men, unwrenched by party feelings, to 
all that love man, to behold and ponder this iniquity which is 
done among us! Shall an army of wretched victims, with- 
out a crime, unconvicted of wrong, pursuing honest occupa- 
tions, be sent back to a loathed and detestable slavery ? 
Here is no ' abstract' question. We ask you, shall men 
now free — shall members of the church — shall children 
from the school — shall even ministers of the gospel — be 
sezied, ironed, and in two hours be on the road to a servi- 
tude to them worse than death ? 

" For our own selves, we do not hesitate to say, what 
every man who has a spark of manhood in him will say with 
us, that no force should bring us into such horrible bond- 
age. Before we would yield ourselves, or go away to linger 
and long for death, through burning years of injustice, we 
would die a thousand deaths. Every house should be our 
fortress; and when fortress and refuge failed us, then our 
pursuers should release our souls to the hands of God who 
gave them, before they should degrade them by a living sla- 
very ! Who shall deny these feelings and such refuge to 
a black man ? 

" With such solemn convictions, no law, impious, infidel 



170 THE IIIGHEK LAW. 

to God and humanity, shall have respect or observance at 
our hands. We desire no collision with it. We shall not 
rashly dash upon it. We shall not attempt a rescue, nor 
interrupt the officers, if they do not interrupt us. We pre- 
fer to labor peacefully for its early repeal, meanwhile saving 
from its merciless jaws as many victims as we can. But in 
those provisions which respect aid to fugitives, may God do 
so to us, yea, and more also, if we do not spurn it as we 
would any other mandate of satan. If in God's Provi- 
dence, fugitives ask bread or shelter, raiment or convey- 
ance, at our hands, my own children shall lack bread before 
they ; my own flesh shall sting with cold ere they shall lack 
raiment. I will both shelter them, conceal them, or speed 
their flight; and while under my shelter, or under my con- 
voy, they shall be to me as my own flesh and blood; and 
whatsoever defence I would put forth for my own children, 
that shall these poor, despised and persecuted creatures 
have in my house or upon the road. The man who shall 
betray a fellow creature to bondage, who shall obey this 
law to the peril of his soul, and to the loss of his manhood, 
were he brother, son or father, shall never pollute my hand 
with grasp of hideous friendship, or cast his swarthy shadow 
across my threshold ! For such service to those whose 
helplessness and poverty make them peculiarly God's chil- 
dren, I shall cheerfully take the pains and penalties of this 
bill. Bonds and fines shall be honors; imprisonment and 
suffering will be passports to fame, not long to linger! It 
is a joy and glory to believe that in these sentiments, sub- 
stantially, the citizens of the North solemnly acquiesce." 

That this law lias been executed with character- 
istic atrocity, is evident from the entire series of 
arrests which have taken place under it. In scarce 



THE FUGITIVE SLAVE LAW. 171 

a singe instance have the proceedings exhibited any- 
thing like a careful and impartial judicial investi- 
gation. 

REFLECTIONS. 

"We may well pause, at this stage of the argu- 
ment. Enough has been exhibited to show the 
true character of slavery, and of that perverted 
legislation which upholds it. Can such a cata- 
logue of enormities find any support or countenance 
among honest men ? Especially, can it plead the 
sanction of Scripture ? To ask these questions is to 
answer them — 'it being impossible that the heart of 
man, or the word of God, should approve of such 
abominations. Either there is no difference between 
right and wrong — no such thing as virtue — or sla- 
very is a crime of the deepest dye. But moral dis- 
tinctions are too firmly fixed in man, and in all 
tilings around him, not to be seen and recognized. 
They must be admitted and approved, however 
painful or strange the evasions that may follow. It 
is this necessity which has put slavery on its de- 
fence — nay, has driven it to the awful extremity of 
denying the supremacy of God, in his word and 
works. This antagonism was not of choice — it 
came unavoidably. Slavery must stand convicted 
of every offence, or impeach the tribunal before 
which it was arraigned. It preferred the latter: 
hence this demonstration against the higher law. 
Nature having fixed the stamp of humanity upon 



172 THE HIGHER LAW. 

the negro, would not betray him to the lust and cu- 
pidity of the slave-holder, therefore, nature must be 
repudiated. The Bible, equally unyielding in its 
impartial distribution of rights, and withal, openly 
asserting its own superiority to all laws that man 
can ordain, must, of course, be renounced : not in 
form, to be sure, but substantially, by a new and 
flagrant antinomianism. Better so, however, than 
by any means to have introduced confusion, and 
thus obscured our moral perceptions. This rejec- 
tion of the higher law, as unfitted to regulate the 
government and legislation of slave states, is the 
homage which vice must ever pay to virtue. This 
dis-fellowship which slavery seeks, marks its deprav- 
ity as with a sun-beam. 

The question now is, whether we shall continue 
to endure a system which thus slinks away from 
the light — which can have no fellowship with good- 
ness — no, not even with (rod himself, because of 
his purity. Can the common sense of man tolerate 
a system so black with abominations that it must 
flout decency as well as piety \ Shall we still legis- 
late against crime, and yet allow this aggregation 
of all crimes to pass unreproved ? It would seem, 
that the time has come for men who cultivate vir- 
tue, and who cherish a righteous repugnance to sin, 
to gather up the moral force of their souls, and give 
the world some adequate demonstration of their ab- 
horrence of a system of such extensive and unmiti- 
gated wickedness. 



THE FUGITIVE SLAVE LAW. 173 

How long shall a nation of such exquisite moral 
refinement, and such jealous regard to political 
rights as not to endure even a questionable tax, 
hesitate, when called to decide on the rights of three 
millions of unoffending citizens? Shall we have 
the indecency to claim liberty for ourselves, and 
deny it to others, who are guilty of no crime ? That 
the African is black, must be admitted, but will 
any one pretend that this is a sufficient reason for 
depriving him, not only of liberty, in the common 
acceptation of the term, but of all the rights of hu- 
manity '. Is the color of the skin what constitutes 
the difference between man and the brutes ? Dare 
any man attempt to maintain such an absurdity ? 
If not, why then do we adhere so pertinaciously 
to this unparalleled abuse? 

The fact is, this question ought never to have 
been debated. It is plain, beyond the need of ar- 
gument. The rights of the African constitute one 
of those first truths which are to be acknowledged 
at sight. All who allow to the negro manhood, 
are bound to allow him the inalienable rights of 
manhood. Under any ordinary state of things, so 
plain and palpable a truth could not require even 
tube stated in order to be approved. The common 
sense of mankind, when not misled by interest or 
by education, is always sufficient to induce assent 
to such a tru h, without the, formality of argument. 
But we have fallen upon strange times, and the 
most sacred rights must either be defended by argu- 
ment, or be trampled in the dust. 



17-i THE HIGIIEK LAW. 



CHAPTER XIV. 
CONSTITUTIONS AND COMPROMISES. 



But "what is more astonishing than any thing else 
in this history of crime, is the apology so often made 
for it — slavery is constitutional ! The slave laws 
are traced to the constitutions of the several slave- 
holding states, and the fugitive slave law is referred 
to the constitution of the United States, as though 
the constitutionality of these laws fully justified 
their atrocity. It surely must be a corrujit fountain 
that sends forth such pointed streams, and we may 
well inquire, by what authority any constitution, 
whether of a single state, or of all the states com- 
bined, thus strikes down the liberties of a particu- 
lar class. 

1. If one man's rights may be sacrificed by the 
constitution, then another's may be, and so en, till 
all except the usurping few are reduced to vassal- 
age. Let it be granted that a constitution may 
rightfully be so framed as to enslave one man, or 
one class of men, and no limit can be assigned to its 
rn~!a\ ing power, but the caprice of those by whom 
it is made. There is no rule for enslaving Africans 
that will not apply just as well to white men. As 



CONSTITUTIONS AND COMPROMISES. 175 

the right to make slaves cannot be conceded "with- 
out putting even* man's liberty in peril, it is fair to 
assume that no such right now exists, or ever did 
exist. Such lawless, despotic power was never 
lodged in human hands. 

2. A constitution which reduces any portion of 
society to slavery, is only an instrument of plunder : 
it is the work of men combined for robbing. In 
such cases, law — constitutional law — is wholly per- 
verted, and instead of being a blessing, it becomes 
the occasion of inexpiable wrongs. 

3. To plead such a constitution as an excuse for 
slavery, is adding insult to injury. The very de- 
sign for which a constitution, or any vestige of civil 
law, exists, is defeated. The avowed object of gov- 
ernment is protection, and to say that the constitu- 
tion recognizes slavery, is to say that the very 
means of liberty have been converted into an engine 
< >f i >i>pression. Law, which should ever be not only 
right. 1 >ut the guarantee of right, is itself made a 
crime, and the cause of innumerable crimes. 

4. The constitution is only a mere agreement — 
and in this ease an agreement to do wrong. It is 
quite certain that such agreements or contracts, 
made by men, depend for their validity upon their 
rectitude. The mere fact of an arrangement or 
stipulation, entered into by any number of men, for 
governmental purposes, does not, in the Least, make 
such an arrangement binding. It may be that the 
agreement contemplates some horrid crime — as, for 



176 THE HIGHER LAW. 

instance, murder — and does any one believe that 
such an agreement has any binding force? 

5. Men have no right to make a constitution which 
sanctions slavery, and it is the imperative duty of 
all good men to break it, when made. The right 
to make laws does not flow from a constitution, for 
a constitution is itself a law ; it is a right which lie- 
longs to human nature, and which that nature is 
bound to exercise with due regard to the eternal 
principles of rectitude. The fact that a law is con- 
stitutional amounts to nothing, unless it is also 
pure; it must harmonize with the law of God, or be 
set at naught by all upright men. Wicked laws 
not only may be broken, but absolutely must be 
broken; there is no other May to escape the wrath 
of God. It is not optional with men whether they 
keep such laws or not ; to keep them is death, and 
not to keep them is the way to life. 

We have heard much about the compromises of 
the constitution, and men have shamelessly asserted 
that these must be kept at all hazards. So far as 
such compromises are innocent they may be inno- 
cently kept, unless they are so foolish as to amount 
to a perversion of the common sense which men are 
always bound to exercis< — hut qo compromise, hav- 
ing for its object the injury or spoliation of any man, 
or number of men, can he kept for a moment by a 
Christian. lie has no more right to agree with 
Others to strip the negro of his political rights, than 



CONSTITUTIONS AND COMPROMISES. 177 

lie has to enter into a conspiracy against the lives of 
his fellow-citizens. Still, we are told that the consti- 
tution requires it, and therefore, we must catch 
slaves for the South, just as though snch an infamous 
crime could be made obligatory by a human law. 
If the constitution requires it, our duty is to spurn 
the infamous requirement, as we would a command 
to murder our best friend ; and if we have by any 
means become a party to a wicked compact, which 
pledges us to the perpetual robbing and degrada- 
tion of the negro, we are under the most solemn ob- 
ligations to amend the compact, or renounce it for- 
ever. "We have a right to make compromises in 
constitutions, and in any other way we choose, but 
no man has a right to do wrong — he may not sa- 
crifice another's liberty, nor his own. 

The flippancy with which this boasted plea of 
constitutional obligation has been put forth on all 
occasions, has made it truly disgusting. It seems 
to have been entirely forgotten that an agreement 
to do wrong could have no force — that the consti- 
tuiion must depend upon its character for its au- 
thority, and not on the number of men who had 
consented to it, or the number of bayonets that 
could be brought to support it. Robbing, perpe- 
trated by whomsoever it may be, is still robbing ; 
nor does the form, the manner, or the instrumen- 
tality employed, at all abate the iniquity of the 
deed. It may be done by a constitution, by a legis- 
lative enactment, or by a pistol held to the victims 



178 THE HIGHER LAW. 

breast ; but in either ease the wrong is the same. 
The denationalization of Poland by sovereign prin- 
ces did not sanctify the act; it was spoliation and 
robbcrv, just as much as it' it had been done by 
private individuals. 

We have then arrived at this great truth, that men 
maybe guilty of robbing in making a constitution — 
yes, the very worst kind of robbing. They may 
plunder the helpless, and consign unborn millions 
to hopeless servitude. There is, indeed, hardly any 
other way in which such deep and damning injus- 
tice can be perpetrated. If the makers of law — 
whether constitutional or statute — were exempted 
from the usual obligations of humanity, and, if their 
decrees could have any authority apart from justice, 
then might wo appeal to the law as a reason for 
oppression. But as the case now stands, such an 
appeal is only offering one wrung as an excuse for 
an other. 

AVhen the fundamental law of the land is proved 
to be a conspiracy against human rights ; when, in- 
stead of protecting equally and impartially every 
human being within its range, it remorselessly and 
without provocation, delivers up large numbers to 
irredeemable bondage; then, and in so far, law 
ceases to be law, and becomes a wanton outrage on 
society. It is the predominance of brute force, act- 
ing on the authority of brute force, and in defiance 
of the moral law. Dishonesty is none the less 
dishonesty for assuming the shape of law ; the 



CONSTITUTIONS AND COMPKOMISES. 179 

drapery in which it chooses to appear, neither 
changes its nature nor gives it authority ; it is just 
as detestable and unlawful as if it appeared in its 
true character. 

So much, then, for the boasted and revered com- 
promises of the constitution. They show only that 
the liberties of men have been shamelessly bar- 
tered — 'that proscription was one of the terms of 
the compact — that the law-making power, in its 
highest function, has been guilty of the most aggra- 
vated abuse. 

The conclusion of the whole matter is this : Be- 
fore God and all good men, the slave laws are a 
nullity. Slavery is villainy — "the sum of all vil- 
lainies"' — and cannot be legalized. 



180 



THE HICxIIER LAW. 



CHAPTER XV. 

EFFECTS OF SLAVERY OX THE FEEE 
STATES. 



It has been contended by many, that the North 
has no interest in the question of slavery, and con- 
sequently, that northern men should not interfere 
with what is peculiarly and exclusively a Southern 
institution. It is time that slave-holders and all 
others were undeceived on this point. The South 
may have all the slaves, but they cannot have all 
the miserable effects of slavery. In many ways 
the free states are made to share a large part of the 
evils, which necessarily result from the injury in- 
flicted on the African race in the slave-holding 
states. 

"If slavery," says the late Theodore Sedgwick, " be a 
bad tiling (or one half of the country, ii must be for tho 
whole, though not equally. If one half of the blood of the 
body politic be corrupted, it is impossible that the other 
should remain pure There can be no such thing as exten- 
sive political evil existing in one part of a nation, without 
spreading its influence, in a greater or less degree, over the 
other, any more than there can be a great sore on a partic- 



EFFECTS OF SLAVERY, <£rC. 181 

ular limb, without affecting the health of the whole body." — 
Pub. andPriv. Econ.: vol. I, p. 248. 

Dr. Bacon, one of the editors of the Independent, 
has recently presented this subject in a still more 
forcible manner : 

" The perpetuated existence of slavery, as it is perpetu- 
ated in the states south and south-west of Pennsylvania, is 
a violation of the duties which these states owe to the other 
states of the Union. We of the free states have a right to 
complain of those states, for thus violating the duties of good 
neighborhood. What is it that they are doing? They are 
keeping — with a passionate and inflexible will they insist on 
keeping — some three millions of people, on the soil of the 
Union, in a condition of extreme intellectual and moral deg- 
radation. Their laws, instead of encouraging the improve- 
ment and gradual elevation of the servile class — instead of 
doing anything to humanize them, and to raise them out of 
their deep moral degradation — are sternly set the other 
way. Their laws deny to the slaves the right of acquiring 
or possessing property — which is the first great stimulus to 
civilized industry; and the same laws annihilate among 
them (so far as laws can accomplish so hideous a result) the 
Divine institution of marriage, the institution e?sential above 
all others, to the development of human affections and of 
moral sensibilities. Their laws, instead of making provision 
for educating the children of the enslaved population, and 
for training them into civilization and a capacity for com- 
plete freedom, are contrived for the very purpose of keep- 
ing that barbarous population in the same condition of 
barbarism, through successive generations. Those states, I 
say, have no right thus to breed up, from age to age, within 
the boundaries of our Union, great hordes of barbarians, 
9 



182 THE HIGHER LAW. 

degraded into the condition of well-fed and well-housed 
cattle, maddened with the ever growing sense of oppression, 
chafing against their bonds, ever ready to burst into confla- 
gration and slaughter — the opprobrium, the peril, the clog, 
the weakness, the disease of our common country. We of 
the free states have no jurisdiction or authority by which 
we can redress the wrong ; but the wrong we suffer is no 
less a wrong because we cannot help ourselves. We have 
no right of intervention, but we have a right to feel the 
wrong and to express our sense of it." — Incl: June 10, 1852. 

Never was there a greater mistake than this, of 
supposing that the effects of slavery can he so com- 
pletely confined to the South, as to relieve the North 
of all solicitude and responsibility on the subject. 
There are several reasons why the free states can 
never cease to remonstrate against slavery. 

1. The first is the common right of benevolent 
regard. As freemen ami as Christians we ought 
to desire the welfare of all men, and to promote that 
welfare to the utmost of our ability. Good will and 
philanthropy are not limited to state lines, nor are 
they excluded by disfranchising constitutions and 
laws. Human sympathy cannot be blighted in this 
way — it will act in favor of the oppressed, and 
overleap all (lie barriers which wicked legislation 
can interpose. Those who think to shut up our 
charities, ami abridge our interest in the common 
brotherhood of man, have plainly miscalculated 
both their own ability and the character of those 
with whom they have to contend. .Men may hold 



EFFECTS OF SLAVERY, &C. 183 

slaves, but they can do no more; the power which 
would make them secure and give them public re- 
spect is nol theirs, and never can be. All men will 
have a natural right to remonstrate against the 
crime, and the instinct of self-preservation will 
prompt them to do whatever they can for its extir- 
pation. 

2. Slavery impairs the moral sense of even the 
non-slave-holding states. It is a misfortune to be- 
come familiar with crime — it weakens the moral 
sense. Especially is this true where the crime is of 
a disputed character, and exists under cover of law. 
To witness continually the operation of such injus- 
tice — to see millions of unoffending men and 
women degraded to the condition of brutes, being 
bought and sold like cattle in 1 lie market, and all 
this under tin 1 sanction of law — cannot fail to mis- 
lead at least the unwary. Long acquaintance with 
the evil blunts those finer sensibilities <>n which 
virtuous action mainly depends, and leaves the in- 
dividual, or the community, in a great measure cal- 
lous to right impressions. Proximity to slavery is, 
therefore, dangerous to the free, and the depression 
of moral feeling which has thus been occasioned 
throughout the non-slave-holding states, is one of 
the saddest consequences that could possibly have 
happened to the North. Were money or mere 
physical Buffering the only things involved by this 
"entangling alliance," it would be well, but moral 
deterioration Is the inevitable result of such connec- 



184 THE HIGHER LAW. 

tions. Hence the North must either extinguish 
slavery, or be fatally corrupted by it. As a matter 
of sheer self-protection, the discusion must be kept 
up, and every means employed for the extinction of 
slavery that philanthropy and religion can devise. 
3. Slavery endangers our national peace. Of all 
the exciting causes which have ever threatened the 
existence of this nation, slavery is the most fearful. 
Indeed, there is scarcely any other subject of differ- 
ence, which can be said to have a national character. 
Other matters are mostly of a local nature, and ad- 
mit of easy adjustment, but this scatters its poison- 
ous influence through all the ramifications of gov- 
ernment, and if not arrested, will ultimately destroy 
the noblest political system the world has ever 
known. On this account, if no other, the free states 
are deeply concerned in everything pertaining to 
slavery. When the Union was formed, by the 
adoption of the present constitution, most of the 
states — all but Massachusetts — were slave-holding 
states ; it was, in fact, a union of slave-holding 
states, and the evils which now press upon us did 
not exist. But the lapse of more than sixty years 
has changed the aspect of affairs, and compromises 
which were tolerable then are intolerable now. 
States, which for fifty years have been free — states, 
several of which individually contain almost as 
large a population as the whole Union at the time 
of its formation — cannot readily acquiesce in ar- 
rangements made under circumstances so widely 



EFFECTS OF SLAVERY, &C. 185 

different, and so totally inapplicable to their present 
condition. Slavery, while it was a common misfor- 
tune, could be borne with a better grace ; but since 
the more prosperous members of the republic have 
thrown it off, and demonstrated that it may safely 
be dispensed with, to insist upon its continuance, 
and to exact for it all the concessions which it gained 
in an earlier day, is to provoke an opposition that 
must end either in the subversion of slavery or of 
the general government. Freemen will nut bow 
their necks to the yoke ; they choose to exert their 
influence for the removal of the evil, rather than 
bear the burden which it imposes. 

4. The North, by keeping silent on this subject, 
would not only be involved in the guilt of conniving 
at oppression, but also in the guilt of betraying a 
most sacred trust — its knowledge of the superior 
advantages of freedom. The southern states have 
never known what it is to be free; to them, eman- 
cipation appears in the light of a dangerous experi- 
ment. Northern silence would be a tacit confirma- 
tion of these fears ; it would say that we have no 
confidence in our own system, and no wish to extend 
it to them. It would be an unbrotherly act on the 
part of the free states, to allow the slave states to 
grope on forever in the darkness and guilt of sla- 
very, without even attempting to relieve them. 
The South may make no demand for this fraternal 
assistance — nay, it may positively remonstrate 
against it, but this alters not the case. Christian 



ISO THE HIGHER LAW. 

philanthropy waits not for a call, it is self-moved 
towards every scene of distress, and persists in its 
kind offices, though often repulsed. How else 
would Christian missions have been established 
among heathen nations % Not unfrequently have 
these missionaries fallen victims to the ferocity of 
those whom they sought to reform, but the martyr- 
dom of some has not deterred others from the en- 
terprise, nor has it ever been deemed a sufficient 
reason for abandoning the heathen world to its fate. 
In like manner, slave-holders may repel the philan- 
thropic efforts of Northern freemen and Christians. 
yet, if animated by the spirit of their Master, they 
shall not fail nor be discouraged, till they have "set 
judgment in the earth." 

5. Again, the free states are pervaded by the 
spirit of liberty so fully, that they can never brook 
the institution of slavery. For, although the para- 
lyzing influence of the system may be felt disas- 
trously among us, yet its utter injustice and stark 
contrariety to the most cherished sentiments of free- 
men, will always produce abhorrence in the better 
class of minds. Besides, it is the business of free- 
men to promote freedom. This they do not so 
much by openly attacking slavery, as by silently 
building up their own free and freedom-giving in- 
stitutions, and establishing, practically, the right of 
every man to be a man. States which, feel com- 
pelled thus to foster liberty, must always be sapping 
the foundations of tyranny. They can only be true 



EFFECTS OF SLAVERY, &C. 187 

to themselves, so long as their acts tend to the sub- 
version of political inequality and injustice. Xe- 
cessity is, therefore, laid upon the free states to 
make war upon slavery; they must do it both in 
self-defence and in obedience to the dictates of truth 
and righteousness. 

6. Another cause of agitation, and the most sov- 
ereign of all, is the stern demand of moral principle. 
Honest men cannot approve of robbing. The North 
cannot wink at the cruel injustice perpetrated upon 
the negro. Much less, can Northern men put forth 
their hands to aid in the abominable work. They 
must and will bear their testimony against the 
abuse, regardless of the consequences. 

In view of these facts, we can see no prospect of 
a speedy settlement, or indeed, of any settlement of 
this question, short of the extinction of slavery. 
Christianity, in the providence of God, has aroused 
the consciences of men, and they cannot be quieted 
by the customary opiate — expediency. The virtue 
of this drug seems to be exhausted, and the somno- 
lency which it once produced, does not return. 
Under this awakened state of public sentiment, 
compromises are no longer a finality. This is 
plainly not the day for compromises on moral ques- 
tions. People are enquiring not only for what is, 
but also, and more ardently, for what is right. It 
is felt to be not enough that the African be left 
where he is — crushed and forlorn, scattered and 



188 THE IHGIIER LAW. 

peeled by centuries of oppression. There is mani- 
festly springing up a tenderness towards the race, 
as one long misused, and it is possible that they 
may yet be fully brought within the pale of human 
sympathy. Kindly feelings, at all events, are pre- 
vailing in the hearts of many Northern men ; they 
cannot see three millions of beings converted into 
brutes, without protesting against the infamous 
abuse. In short, slavery, blessed and baptized 
though it may be by those who practice it, is gen- 
erally viewed by the people of the free states, as 
unmitigated villany. The negro whose ignorance 
and imbecility should entitle him to compassion, 
and especially exempt him from becoming the prey 
of honorable men, is summarily trodden clown and 
cut off from all the rights of manhood ; but this 
thing is not now done in a corner, nor with the con- 
sent of all who witness it ; when the iron enters the 
colored man's soul he suffers not alone — intelli- 
gent Christian men share with him the pang, and 
appeal to Heaven in his behalf. A feeling of broth- 
erhood is stirred, and it has fairly arrested the 
slave-holder in his career; it demands not only a 
reason for the cruelties inflicted, but also a repara- 
tion of injuries. It demands that the slave, being a 
man, shall be treated as a man. 



POSSIBLE RESULTS. 189 



CHAPTER XVI. 
POSSIBLE KESULTS 



Perhaps it is the design of Providence, that 
American slavery shall be the occasion of develop- 
ing a principle new to the political world, though 
not new to Christianity, namely, the equality of 
races as well as of nations. The equality of 
nations or governments has long been admitted, 
but particular races have preyed upon each other. 
That there is an essential brotherhood of man — 
that the whole human race constitutes but one fam- 
ily — that every man is the brother of every other 
man — are great truths, well understood in religion, 
but strangely at variance with the political history 
of the world. In our own national history, the 
right of individuals of the same race — of white men 
— to strike for their liberty, is fully recognized, in op- 
position to the despotisms of the old world ; yet we 
have not conceded the same right to other races. 
The African who aims at freedom we deem guilty 
of a high misdemeanor ! AW- justly encourage Eu- 
ropean peasants to resist oppression, and then most 
shamefully turn to the negro in our midst and de- 
9* 



190 THE HIGHER LAW. 

grade liim to the condition of a chattel. Such 
inconsistency has neither parallel nor excuse. 

It may be, also, that the scarcely disguised infi- 
delity — the hold denial of the higher law, as con- 
nected with civil government — is hut a timely recall 
of the church and the country to the ancient land- 
marks, preparatory to new trials and new triumphs. 
Certainly no ground can be ceded here. The higher 
law is first, midst, and last. It is the sum total of 
all authority, because on it rests whatever of obliga- 
tion can be found in any human law. So vital is 
this doctrine of the Divine supremacy, that with it 
must stand or fall not only civil liberty, but religion 
itself. It is true beyond all contradiction, 1. That 
no man can preach the gospel without preaching the 
higher Law ; 2. That no man can believe in God with- 
out believing in the higher law ; 3. That no man 
can be a Christian without keeping the higher law. 
The burden of every Christian prayer is that the 
higher law may be established ; that the kingdom 
of God may come, and his will be done on earth as 
ii is in heaven. This loyalty to God is the substance 
of religion. It cannol be eradicated from the be- 
liever's heart without destroying the very substance 
of his faith, and cutting off all his hopes. It may 
be, we say, that this violent assault upon the first 
principles of religion is intended to awaken the 
church, more than ever, to its Divine allegiance, 
and its distinctive character as a purely theocratic 
institution. 



POSSIBLE RESULTS. 191 

But more than this. May we not hope that the 
thorough christianization of civil government is to 
be the issue of this great struggle? The perma- 
nence of our republic depends upon the realization 
of this hope. The crimes of our country, especially 
towards the African, if persevered in, will plunge 
it into ruin ; it cannot escape the common fate of 
evil-doers. While penning these lines, there comes 
to me a speech of Kossuth, so full and so just on 
this point, that I beg the reader's indulgence for an 
extract : 

" There is one law, the obedience to which would prove 
a rock upon which the freedom and happiness of nations may 
rest sure to the end of their days. And that law, ladies and 
gentlemen, is the law proclaimed by our Saviour; that rock 
is the unperverted religion of Christ. But while the conso- 
lation of this sublime truth falls meekly upon my soul, like 
as the moonlight falls upon the smooth sea, I humbly claim 
your forbearance, ladies and gentlemen ; I claim it in the 
nami of the Almighty Lord, to hear from my lips a mourn- 
ful truth. It may displease you; it may offend; but still, 
truth is truth. Offended vanity may blame me; power may 
frown at me, and pride may call my boldness arrogant, but 
still, truth is truth, and I, bold in my unpretending humili- 
ty, will proclaim that truth; I will proclaim it from laud to 
laud, and from sea to sea; I will proclaim it with the faith 
of the martyrs of old, till the seed of my word falls upon the 
consciences of men. Let come what come may : I say, with 
Luther, God may help me, I cannot otherwise. Yes, ladies 
and gentlemen, the law of our Saviour, the religion of Christ, 
can secure a happy future to nations. But, alas! there is 



192 THE HIGHER LAW. 

yet no Christian people on earth — not a single one amongst 
all. I have spoken the word. It is harsh, but true. Near- 
ly two tl ousai d years have passed since Christ proclaimed 
the eternal decree tf God, to which the happiness of man- 
kind is bound, and sinctilied it with h s own blood, and still 
there is not one single nation on earth which would have 
enacted into its 1-iw-book that eternal decree. Men believe 
in the mysteries of religion according to the creed of their 
church ; they go to church, and they pray, and give alms to 
the poor, and drop the balm of a nsolation into the wounds 
of the afflicted, and believe to do all what the Lord com- 
manded to do, and believe to be Christians. No! Some 
few may be, but their nation is not — their country is not 
The era of Christianity has yet to come, and when it comes, 
then, only then, will be the future of nations sure. Far be 
it from me to misapprehend the immense benefit which the 
Christian religion, such as it already is, has operated in man- 
kind's history. It has influenced the private character of 
man, and the social condition of millions; it was the nurse 
of a new civilization, and softening the manners and morals 
of men, its influence has been felt even in the worst quarter 
of history — in war. The continual massacres of the Greek 
and Roman kings and chiefs, and the extermination of na- 
tions by them — the all-devastating warfare of the Timurs 
and Gengiskhans — are in general not more to be met with. 
But though that beneficial influence of Christianity we have 
cheerfully to acknowledge, yet it is still not to be cisputed 
that the law of Christ does yet nowhere rule the Christian 
world." — Speech at the Tabernacle, N. Y., June 21. 

To cover up sin is not the way to prosperity. 
With whatever facility we may barter the rights of 
the negro by way of compromise, the stability of the 



POSSIBLE RESULTS. 193 

government gains nothing. Such policy only de- 
ceives. It removes not the evil, and its apparent 
success is no more an evidence of national security 
than the hectic flush upon the consumptive's coun- 
tenance is a proof of health. Our safety, and our 
only safety, is in bringing, as speedily as possible, . 
the principles of the government into exact con- 
formity to the gospel. When this is done, heaven 
will be for us and not against us — its providence 
will cease to trouble us, and will surely discomfit 
our foes. 

The danger occasioned by the anti-Christian treat- 
ment which our government inflicts on the negro, 
was never more clearly expressed than by Mr. Jef- 
ferson : 

" Can the liberties of a nation be thought secure, when 
we have removed their only firm basis — a conviction in the 
minds of the people that these liberties are of the gift of 
God ? That they are not to be violated but with his wrath ? 
Indeed, I tremble for my country when I reflect that God 
is just; that his justice cannot sleep forever; that, consider- 
ing numbers, nature, and natural means only, a revolution 
of the wheel of fortune, an exchange of situation is among 
possible events; that it may become prob.ible by supernat- 
ural interference! The Almighty has no attribute which 
can take side with us in such a contest. 

"What an incomprehensible machine is man! who can 
endure imprisonment, and death itself, in vindication of his 
own liberty, and the next moment be deaf to all those mo- 
tives, whose power supported him through his trial, and 
inflict on his fellow men a bondage, one hour of which is 



10i THE HIGHER LAW. 

fraught with more misery than that which he rose in rebel- 
lion to oppose. But we must wait with patience the work- 
ings of an overruling Providence, and hope that that is pre- 
paring the deliverance of these, our suffering brethren. 
When the measure of their tears shall be full — when their 
tears shall have involved heaven itself in darkness — doubt- 
less a God of justice will awake to their distress, and by 
diffusing a light and liberality among their oppressors, or at 
length, by his exterminating thunder, manifest his attention 
to things of this world, and that they are not left to the 
guidance of blind fatality." — Letter to M. Warville, Paris, 
1788. 

But if the evangelization of civil government be 
too much to be expected at present, we may at least, 
confidently anticipate that this conflict will result 
in the emancipation of the colored race. The dis- 
cussion — barren as it seems to many, of beneficial 
effects — has already done much towards accomplish- 
ing this object. True, there has been a temporary 
tightening of slave bonds in consequence of agita- 
tion; the oppressor, now,asofold, disregarding the 
command to let the people go, has ■ actually in- 
creased their hardships. This, however, no more 
proves thai (he final issue of the movemenl w ill not 
be favorable, than any disagreeable sensation pro- 
duced by medicine proves that its ultimate effect 
will not be salutary. Some incidental evils always 
accompany the work <>f improvement, lie who is 
disheartened at such trials, does not understand the 
economy of reform. If we wait till slave-holders 



POSSIBLE RESULTS. 105 

concur, we shall wait forever. Such prudence 
would leave every perpetrator of crime undisturbed, 
because the guilty never like to be exposed. The 
work is to be done in spite of opposition ; not by 
deferring it till all opposition has ceased. Among 
the most favorable indications, is the fact that the 
subject of slavery has at last fairly got into Con- 
gress. The operation of gag laws could not keep it 
out. Neither the extreme dread of the South to 
touch the subject, nor the persevering neglect of the 
North to give consec|uence to anti-slavery move- 
ments, could check the progress of sentiment, or 
prevent its approach to the capitol. The spell is 
broken. Congress cannot avoid the subject if it 
w«>nl(l. In more than half the states an anti-slavery 
feeling has become ubiquitous, and no possible cir- 
cumstances can confine this feeling to northern lati- 
tudes. It will How out in all directions ; it will 
pervade the slave states as it does the free, and the 
halls of legislation as it does the social circle. 
Happy would it be, if the representatives of the 
people were better prepared for this contingency. 

Extraordinary pains have been taken to put down 
all agitation. AW- have heard again and again of 
the great delicacy of the subject. Slavery must not 
be discussed, because slave-holders would not en- 
dure it. That time has passed, and the government 
still survives; and that it will still survive the most 
thorough discussion, as well as the most radical im- 
provement in this matter, we have not the slightest 



196 THE HIGHER LAW. 

doubt. Why should it not ? There is certainly no 
one aspect of the question either impracticable, or 
fraught with injury to the South. Emancipation, 
notwithstanding the difficulties which some have 
seen in the way, is one of the most practicable sug- 
gestions ever made for a nation's welfare. Let us 
look at a few facts. 

1. If the slaves were white men, there would not 
be a single objection to their emancipation. All 
would admit that our three millions of slaves ought 
to be freed at once, and that they could just as well 
take care of themselves as can any other three mil- 
lions of white men. 

2. The slaves, when emancipated, will be more 
easily governed than they are now, for the simple 
reason, that they will be in their natural place in 
society ; they will act as human beings, and be 
acted upon by the law as human beings ; they will 
have character, and responsibilities, and immunities, 
which will elicit in them, as in other men, due re- 
gard to conduct. In a word, they will have the 
motives to govern them that other people have. 

3. The slaves, when freed, will be even more use- 
ful to the white population among whom they 
live. It is notorious that slave labor is the dearest 
labor which can be employed. The extreme pov- 
erty of the southern states is mainly owing to this. 
The men who till the soil have no sufficient interest 
in their work, and hence the country must always 
be depressed. Could these colored people be edu- 



POSSIBLE EESULTS. 197 

cated and hired, as laborers are in the free states, 
their skill and efficiency would soon enrich their 
employers. 

4. Emancipation will be no less safe than profita- 
ble. The idea of danger is utterly absurd — the 
negroes would be as harmless as they now are, and 
more so. In the West Indies, where emancipation 
has been tried, it has led to no disorder — the poor 
colored man has proved as quiet as the poor white 
man. The South would be abundantly more secure 
in every respect, if all her slaves were raised from 
the irresponsibility of brutes to the responsibility 
of men. It avails nothing to say that slaves are ig- 
norant — can neither read nor write — for this is 
precisely the condition of thousands of white people 
in this and every other countiy . Many of our best 
farmers and mechanics have no education. The 
slaves know enough to work, and it would be well 
if many of their owners knew as much. 

5. Oppression and degradation are provocatives 
to sedition and insurrection. Let the galling chains 
of the slave be broken off, and let his attachments 
be those of kind and honorable dealing, and we haz- 
ard nothing in saving that he will be orderly and 
confiding. This is the way to remove the perils of 
a slave-holding community. That the South is in 
danger, may be true, but if so, it is a danger crea- 
ted by its wickedness, and the only means of giving 
security is to banish the tyranny from which the 
danger arises. 



/ 



198 THE HIGHER LAW. 

G. From the abolition of slavery, the South has 
everything to hope and nothing to fear. Not only 
would the state of society be rendered more secure, 
but its property would be vastly augmented. The 
rise of land alone, would, in a single year, more 
than counterbalance all the nominal losses — for real 
losses there can be none — occasioned by emancipa- 
tion. Lands now worth from three to ten dollars 
per acre, would then be worth from fifty to one 
hundred dollars per acre. Besides, the slaves would 
be worth infinitely more to the country. ISTot a 
dollar of property would be sacrificed by ceasing to 
reckon men as money. Those who have lands 
should be made to set their slaves free, and find 
the remuneration in the incrased value of their real 
estate, while those who own nothing but negroes 
should be indemnified to some extent by the state, 
through a tax levied on those who hold other kinds 
of property. If cupidity were a ruling motive with 
slave-holders, they would be gainers by promoting 
emancipation. 

7. So impressed are we with the force of these 
truths, that we believe the South not only ought to 
tolerate discussion on the subject of slavery, but 
should actually hire men to proclaim anti-slavery 
doctrines through all her territory. Instead of per- 
secuting abolitionists, the slave states should pay 
them a liberal salary, and increase their number as 
fasl as possible. Emancipation is a blessing for 
which those states might pay millions, and yet be 



POSSIBLE RESULTS. 199 

gainers; it would be to them political salvation. 
But great as the advantage would be, we may not 
force it upon them — we are limited to that expos- 
tulation and fraternal entreaty which man owes to 
man. From the faithful discharge of this duty, 
there can be no release. 



200 THE HIGHER LAW. 



CHAPTER XVII 
CONCLUSION. 



I have now only to suggest certain causes, which, 
whatever may be the present aspects or future re- 
sults of this great controversy, must inevitably keep 
it before the people for yet a considerable time. 
No "finality" has been reached, or can be reached, 
till the demand created by these causes is complied 
with. Men may as well legislate against the tides 
of "old ocean," as against the essential elements of 
their own humanity. Nature knows no compro- 
mises. Nor are these causes confined to the free 
states. They belong to man as man ; to the free- 
man, the slave, and the slave-holder; to all ages, 
and all countries. 

1. The abolition of slavery is demanded by eter- 
nal justice. This is our answer to all who ask a 
reason fur emancipation. What justice demands, 
it can never be sate or expedient to withhold. If 
God had not made the negro a man, his down-trod- 
den condition would have made no appeal to heav- 
en — none to earth. It would not have proclaimed 
injury, fraud, usurpation, and cruelty, perpetrated 



CONCLUSION. 201 

by man upon his fellow man, without the slightest 
wish or intention ever to make restitution. Slavery 
is thus in conflict with the very foundation princi- 
ple of all order. It strikes down both the govern- 
ment of God and the government of man. By ma- 
king a mockery of justice, it arrays itself against 
the slave-holder no less than against the slave. It 
vainly attempts to change the type of nature, and 
blot out elements which the Creator has made per- 
petual. Hence, so long as man is man, this war of 
right against wrong must of necessity continue — 
he is constitutionally pledged to "fight a good fight" 
in this holy cause. To be indifferent here, is to sink 
below the dignity of nature, and take a position, 
which, though lawful to brutes, is not to man. 

2. Every other attribute of God demands the ab- 
olition of slavery. His wisdom, benevolence, holi- 
ness and power, are equally opposed to the degra- 
dation inflicted upon the negro, who, no less than the 
white man, was made in his image, and is the work 
of his hands. Slavery may work, but God is coun- 
ter-working ; his wisdom and power, his holiness 
and eternity, are a guarantee that the machinations 
of the wicked shall not succeed. It matters not 
how men compromise. They may say, " We have 
made a covenant with death, and with hell are we 
at agreement ; when the overflowing scourge shall 
pass through, it shall not come unto us, for we have 
made lies our refuge, and under falsehood have we 
hid ourselves." But God says, " Judgment will I 



202 THE HIGHER LAW. 

lay to the line, and righteousness to the plummet; 
and the hail shall sweep away the refuge of lies, and 
the waters shall overflow the hiding place : your 
covenant with death shall be disannulled, and your 
agreement with hell shall not stand." Statesmen 
may toil assiduously, and lay their plans with pro- 
found skill, and the people may bring their most 
costly offerings to the shrine of union, but all to no 
purpose: for over eveiy nation that will not do 
right, "the line of confusion and the stones of 
emptiness" are stretched by an invisible, but Al- 
mighty hand, and there is no escape. Anti-slavery 
lecturers are only an echo of Providence, and if they 
should cease to speakj the truths which they an- 
nounce will still be uttered, but the disasters atten- 
dant on vice will speak in far less kindly tone. If 
such lecturers trouble Israel, it is only as the faith- 
ful utterances of Elijah troubled AJbab. 

3. The abolition of slavery is demanded by the 
spirit of the age. It is extremely absurd to con- 
tinue at this day and in this country, an institution 
befitting only the midnight of pagan darkness. 
When nations were wholly barbarous — when nei- 
ther science nor religion had shed its mitigating 
influence on society, such flagrant injustice might 
be tolerated, but to attempt it now is infatuation. 
Something may be achieved, it is true, by spread- 
ing a thick pall of darkness over large sections of 
country— thai is, by keeping society still in barba- 
rism; yet oven this device is about to fail. Theage 



CONCLUSION. 203 

is happily too full of light to admit of easy circum- 
scription. The spirit of progress stamps slavery as 
an impossibility. We must either return to savage 
life, or dismiss this relic of uncultivated and un- 
Christianized times. 

4. The abolition of slavery is demanded by the 
character of our own government. It is in vain to 
rely on compromises and exceptions, when the 
whole spirit and substance of our republican system 
is directly hostile to slavery. The more we sustain 
freedom for ourselves, the more we sustain it for 
others ; republicanism, therefore, disqualifies its pos- 
sessors for enacting or executing oppressive laws. 
Never was slavery more out of its place than in 
this country. It is an exotic on our free shores, and 
must die because it cannot live in an atmosphere 
of liberty. 

5. The abolition of slavery is demanded by com- 
mon sense. Slavery is not simply wicked — it dors 
not accomplish its ends by merely unjustifiable 
means. It evinces everywhere extreme imbecility. 
In whatever light we view it, it is a thorough- 
ly contemptible arrangement. So long as man is 
rational, he must, apart from all moral considera- 
tions, despise a system which, under the pretence 
of doing good, inflicts only evil. Grod has given 
men too much sense, to admit of such stupidity. 
Slavery sinks below the intellectual, as it does be- 
low the moral powers of man; it belong8 to the 
category of crime — a department in which folly 



204: THE HIGIIER LAW. 

and guilt are always combined. If we cannot have 
something better than slavery, by way of civil reg- 
ulation, let us have nothing. The human mind 
spurns such nonsense. Reason demands reasonable 
laws, or none ; it insists on equity, or an abandon- 
ment of the functions of legislation. 



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